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Plinth

· Private foundation

Stella M Buerger Charitable Trust

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$53k
Granted FY2025still arriving
10
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What you fund
01

What you funded, over time

By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 53% of STELLA M BUERGER CHARITABLE TRUST’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.

02FY2025 · 10 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k7 grants · $23k
  • $10k–50k3 grants · $30k
$5,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$1.0M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
SETON HIGH SCHOOL$10,000
ELDER HIGH SCHOOL$10,000
HEARING SPEECH & DEAF CENTER$10,000
THE BEECHWOOD HOME$5,000
OHIO VALLEY VOICES$5,000
THE CARNEGIE THEATRE$2,500
OHIO RIVER FOUNDATION$2,500
MOUNT ORB COMMUNITY PLAYGROUND$2,500
THE DRAGONFLY FOUNDATION$2,500
PROKIDS$2,500
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%MOUNT ORB COMMUNITY PLAYGROUND: $3k → 16%INNER CITY YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES: $1k → 16%CHANGING GEARS: $5k → 16%BEECH ACRES PARENTING CENTER: $3k → 16%CINCINNATI WORKS: $1k → 16%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$396k · 20 repeat orgs$45k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.

20 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

20
14

Total granted

$396k
$35k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+39%
+19%

Still filing today

55%
57%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
Human ServicesEnvironmentHealthArts & CultureEducationHousing & ShelterOther

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

  • CN
    CINCINNATI NATURE CENTER
    8× · 2017–2024 · $38k · revenue +39%
  • NK
    NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC
    7× · 2018–2024 · $36k · revenue +145%
  • OV
    OHIO VALLEY VOICES
    6× · 2017–2025 · $19k · revenue +68%

Funded once

  • NP
    NEW PATH CHILD & FAMILY SOLUTIONS
    one grant, 2021 · $5k
  • CI
    CHANGINGGEARS INC
    one grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%
  • PC
    PREGNANCY CENTER WEST
    one grant, 2024 · $3k · revenue +2%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Cincinnati Parks Foundation

To build broad based private/public partnerships supporting the conservation and enhancement of our City's parks and greenspaces.

Recreation & Sports
2
The Children's Home of Cincinnati Ohio

Creating lasting results that strengthen families and our community by guiding individuals from infancy to independence through comprehensive education, behavioral, and health services.

Human Services
3
Cincinnati Waldorf School

The Cincinnati Waldorf School educates the unfolding capacities of children by engaging the creative imagination of the mind, the spirit of the heart, and the skillful use of the hands. The community actively participates in creating an…

4
Children's Home of Northern Kentucky Inc

A trauma-informed Healthcare Organization, CHNK Behavioral Health creates Holistic Partnerships for Health and Wellness that are inclusive, innovative and inspiring.

Human Services
5
Cincinnati's Optimum Residential Environments Inc

Residential & Habilitative Svs. Provide residential and habilitative services to adults with developmental disabilities

Health
6
Jewish Family Service of the Cincinnati Area

A social service agency, JFS strengthens lives and our diverse community by providing exceptional and transformational human services. Services include: Counseling, Case Management, Financial and Food Support, Home Care, Senior Services,…

Human Services
7
Cincinnati Union Bethel

Empowering women to break the cycles of poverty, addiction, and human trafficking.

Human Services
8
Ohio United Way

To strengthen the capacity of United Ways across Ohio and to advance the common good for Ohioans.

Philanthropy
9
The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati

The mission of The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati (TCT) is to educate, entertain and engage audiences of all ages through professional theatrical productions and arts education programming. Our vision is to awaken a lifelong love of…

Arts & Culture
10
Cincinnati Aquatic Club

To offer children and young adults a top quality program that develops, trains and competes as competitive swimmers year-round in a supportive and motivating enviroment that respects, challenges and nurtures them as athletes, students, and…

Recreation & Sports
11
Cincinnati Country Day School

Creating leaders who, through the discovery of their own abilities, kindle the potential in others and better a dynamic world.

Education
12
Cincinnati Center for Autism

We support individuals with autism and their families through programming in the areas of academics, adaptive behavior, communication, and social participation.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Beechwood Home and the most unlike its peers is Mount Orab Community Playground Fund Inc. 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.

← shrinkinggrowing →↓ leaning in → pulling backsteadySenior Care & Health Servic…Independent K-12 SchoolsEconomic Opportunity & Work…Youth Development and Mento…Private Membership ClubsMuseums and Cultural Instit…
the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side
Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 32 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number21%4%<5yr14%4%5–10yr19%12%10–20yr17%32%20–35yr15%20%35–55yr15%28%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value21%1%<5yr14%4%5–10yr19%3%10–20yr17%13%20–35yr15%18%35–55yr15%61%55yr+

The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.0%0/26
the rest of the field
13%
844/6,504

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.

04the grantee network

22 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 22 of the 38 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
22/22
Grantees still filing
17/22
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

ELDER HIGH SCHOOL — $64,500 · OtherELDER HIGH SCHOOLSETON HIGH SCHOOL — $62,500 · OtherSETON HIGH SCHOOLSPRINGER SCHOOL — $21,500 · OtherSPRINGER SCHOOLHEARING SPEECH & DEAF CENTER — $18,500 · OtherHEARING SPEECH & DEAF CENTERSt Rita School For The Deaf — $15,000 · OtherSt Rita School For The DeafCISE — $13,000 · Other+18 more — $65,250 · Other+18 moreNORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC — $36,000 · EducationNORTHERN KENTU…OHIO VALLEY VOICES — $19,250 · EducationOHIO VALLEY VO…CINCINNATI NATURE CENTER — $37,500 · EnvironmentCINCINNATI…Ohio River Foundation — $2,500 · EnvironmentOhio River…GORMAN HERITAGE FARM FOUNDATION — $1,500 · EnvironmentCINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER — $15,500 · Arts & CultureTAFT MUSEUM OF ART — $12,500 · Arts & CultureWave Foundation Inc — $2,500 · Arts & CultureCancer Family Care Inc — $14,000 · HealthBEECHWOOD HOME — $7,500 · HealthTHE DRAGONFLY FOUNDATION — $2,500 · HealthProKids — $14,500 · Civil RightsBethany House Services Inc — $12,500 · Housing & ShelterSLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC — $2,000 · Housing & Shelter
Other$260,250Education$55,250Environment$41,500Arts & Culture$30,500Health$24,000Civil Rights$14,500Housing & Shelter$14,500

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetCINCINNATI NATURE CENTER — $37,500 over 8y, 0.1% of budgetNORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC — $36,000 over 7y, 0.1% of budgetOHIO VALLEY VOICES — $19,250 over 6y, 0.1% of budgetCINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER — $15,500 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetSt Rita School For The Deaf — $15,000 over 3y, 0.1% of budgetProKids — $14,500 over 5y, 0.1% of budgetCancer Family Care Inc — $14,000 over 6y, 0.3% of budgetCISE — $13,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetTAFT MUSEUM OF ART — $12,500 over 5y, 0.1% of budgetBethany House Services Inc — $12,500 over 5y, 0.1% of budgetBEECHWOOD HOME — $7,500 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetCHANGINGGEARS INC — $5,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetPREGNANCY CENTER WEST — $2,500 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetWave Foundation Inc — $2,500 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetBEECH ACRES — $2,500 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE DRAGONFLY FOUNDATION — $2,500 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetSLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC — $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetGORMAN HERITAGE FARM FOUNDATION — $1,500 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetINNER CITY YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES — $1,250 over 1y, 0.5% of budget
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 CINCINNATI NATURE CENTER
  • Who funds NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC
  • Who funds OHIO VALLEY VOICES
  • Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
  • Who funds St Rita School For The Deaf
  • Who funds ProKids
  • Who funds Cancer Family Care Inc
  • Who funds CISE
  • Who funds TAFT MUSEUM OF ART
  • Who funds Bethany House Services Inc
  • Who funds BEECHWOOD HOME
  • Who funds CHANGINGGEARS INC
  • Who funds MOUNT ORAB COMMUNITY PLAYGROUND FUND INC
  • Who funds PREGNANCY CENTER WEST
  • Who funds Wave Foundation Inc
  • Who funds BEECH ACRES
  • Who funds Ohio River Foundation
  • Who funds THE DRAGONFLY FOUNDATION
  • Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC
  • Who funds GORMAN HERITAGE FARM FOUNDATION
  • Who funds INNER CITY YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES
  • Who funds CINCINNATI WORKS

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.

The Greater Cincinnati FoundationOH35.5× affinity16 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Johnson Charitable Gift Fund · Robert a & Marian K Kennedy Charitable Trust · L & L Nippert Charitable Foundation Inc Attn Carter F Randolph Phd · Andrew Jergens Foundation · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Pfau Charitable Foundation · John a Schroth Family Char Tr · Carol Ann and Ralph V Haile Jr Foundation · J Frederick & Helen B Vogel Trust · Agnes Nordloh Charitable Trust

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 Stella M Buerger 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%10%20%30%40%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    11report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Stella M Buerger Charitable Trust?

    Find your warmest path to Stella M Buerger Charitable Trust through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.

    Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 38 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph