· Private foundation
Shaffer Family Charitable Trust
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $165k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $175k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER LEHIGH VALLEY | $250,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY | $125,000 |
| ST LUKE'S HOSPITAL | $50,000 |
| NEW BETHANY MINISTRIES | $35,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| THE CHILDREN'S HOME OF EASTON | $20,000 |
| HISPANIC CENTER LEHIGH VALLEY | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| EASTER SEALS EASTERN PA | $10,000 |
| ALLENTOWN SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION | $7,500 |
| MILLER-KEYSTONE BLOOD CENTER | $5,250 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| STEPHEN'S PLACE | $2,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $224k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
31 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- NBNEW BETHANY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $280k · revenue +28%
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA INC7× · 2018–2024 · $175k · revenue +118%
- SLST LUKE'S HOSPITAL OF BETHLEHEM PA3× · 2022–2024 · $150k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- ARAMERICAN RED CROSSone grant, 2017 · $33k
- CBCONGREGATION BRITH SHOLOMone grant, 2017 · $15k
- AAALLENTOWN AREA ECUMENICAL FOOD BANKgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +62%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Establish and maintain a medical group consisting of clinicians employed by lehigh valley health network. this medical group will fulfill the charitable mission of promoting community health through health education, injury prevention, and…
Our mission is to heal, comfort and care for the people of our community by providing advanced and compassionate health care of superior quality and value, supported by education and research.
Elwyn makes life better for people with developmental and behavioral health challenges.
Our mission is who we are and what we do: to provide world class care close to home. our vision is what we aim for to best serve our community: to build a healthier community.
We heal, comfort and care for the people of our community by providing advanced and compassionate health care of superior quality and value, supported by education and clinical research.
Working as an integrated system within highmark health, employees at all of ahn's care sites, including hospitals, health + wellness pavilions, primary and specialty care offices and more, are committed to improving health and promoting…
Our mission is success through lifelong learning and learning for life. our vision is for adults to have the skills to transform their lives, sustain their families and strengthen their communities.
Philhaven promotes hope, healing and wholeness through the provision of behavioral resources.
The mission of the community action committee of the lehigh valley is to improve the quality of life in the lehigh valley by building a community in which all people have access to economic opportunity, the ability to pursue that…
To help people reach their full potential through a rewarding career, meaningful relationships, and an enriching community life. Via creates pathways to success through vocation, inclusion, and advocacy.
To empower the latino community through education, advocacy, partnerships and exceptional services
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Children's Home of Easton Inc and the most unlike its peers is Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 52 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 10% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
27 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 27 of the 46 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds NEW BETHANY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S HOSPITAL OF BETHLEHEM PA ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF THE GREATER LEHIGH VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT OF EASTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOME OF EASTON INC ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC CENTER LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds ALLENTOWN SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ALLENTOWN INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds MINSI TRAILS COUNCIL #502 BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds HCSC - BLOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE LEHIGH CONFERENCE OF CHURCHES ↗
- Who funds STEPHENS PLACE ↗
- Who funds THIRD STREET ALLIANCE FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds SHANTHI PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ALLENTOWN AREA ECUMENICAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH VALLEY CHILDREN'S CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds FUND TO BENEFIT CHILDREN AND YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds HAWK MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MOSSER VILLAGE FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MUSIC SCHOOL ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Lehigh Valley Community Foundation · United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley · Air Products Foundation · Ross J Born and Wendy G Born Charitable Trust · Sylvia Perkin Perpetual Charitable Trust · The Century Fund Trust · Harry C Trexler Estate · Ppl Foundation · Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation · Frederick H Bedford Jr & Margaret S Bedford Charitable Foundation · The Donald B and Dorothy L Stabler Foundation · Julius & Katheryn Hommer Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Shaffer Family Charitable Trust funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.