· Private foundation
The Ariel Foundation
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 $10k9 grants · $41k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $207k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $952k
- $250k+9 grants · $6.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COOPER PARK DEVELOPMENT COMPANY | $2,760,850 |
| KNOX COUNTY LAND REUTILIZATION CORPORATION | $775,811 |
| CITY OF MOUNT VERNON | $750,964 |
| ALCOHOL AND DRUG FREEDOM CENTER OF KNOX COUNTY | $500,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY OF MOUNT VERNON | $500,000 |
| KNOX COUNTY FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| MOUNT VERNON NAZARENE UNIVERSITY | $285,165 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL INC | $250,000 |
| BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE PARTNERS OF CENTRAL OHIO | $250,000 |
| MOUNT VERNON ARTS CONSORTIUM INC | $200,000 |
| OHIO EASTERN STAR HOME | $175,000 |
| KNOX COUNTY HEAD START INC | $162,510 |
| WOODWARD DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION | $90,430 |
| KNOX COUNTY CAREER CENTER | $64,890 |
| WOODWARD OPERA HOUSE CONSERVANCY | $57,750 |
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, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of The Ariel Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 92% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +24% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $314k 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
- MVMount Vernon Nazarene University8× · 2017–2024 · $6.1M · revenue +23%
- CPCOOPER PARK DEVELOPMENT COMPANY2× · 2023–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +83% · 71% of their budget
- KCKNOX COUNTY LAND REUTILIZATION CORPORATI5× · 2020–2024 · $2.7M · revenue ×11 · 64% of their budget
Funded once
- TFTHE FOUNDATION OF KNOX COUNTY COMMUNITY HOSPITALone grant, 2019 · $2.0M
- KPKNOX PARTNERSHIP FOR ARTS& CULTURE INC DBA WOODWARD OPERA HOUSE CONSERVANCYone grant, 2020 · $382k
- NDNEW DIRECTIONS DOMESTIC ABUSE SHELTER OF KNOX COUNTYone grant, 2022 · $300k
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.
Knox Development Partnership partners with key community members including Knox County Foundation, Ariel Foundation and Area Development Foundation to further economic development in Knox County through key investments in real estate and…
The purpose of the knoxville museum of art is to support and promote public interest, awareness, knowledge and education in the visual arts in east tennessee . to this end, the corporation shall, among other things, develop permanent…
Dedicated to the preservation, restoration and transformation of architecturally and/or historically significant buildings, open spaces and parks in knoxville and knox county.
To provide services for senior citizens in knox county
Maple knoll communities, inc. is recognized as a growing provider of outstanding senior communities and services that allows those we serve to thrive in a stimulating and dignified environment. this will be accomplished through creativity…
To provide affordable housing to low and moderate income persons in east tennessee through first-time homebuyer education; assist with mortgage loans, downpayments, and closing costs; build new single family housing; develop multi-family…
The mission of the organization is to develop teamwork among the social service agencies serving knox county and their constituencies in the interest of the financial support of such agencies, and the effective planning and execution of…
The Knox County Chamber of Commerce is a private business organization and serves as a vehicle through which the business and professional community are organized to work together to define and solve community and economic development…
Provides housing to elderly and disabled persons and families under section 202 of the national housing act under an agreement with the department of hud.
The organization's primary mission is to promote general improvement of agricultural, industrial, mechanical, and educational interests in the county.
The mission of the foundation for knox community hospital is to establish and maintain relationships that generate philanthropic support for the hospital and to provide education and support for effective hospital advocacy and governance…
The general henry knox museum serves to honor the life and times of henry knox and the heritage of montpelier.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Knox County Land Reutilization Corporati and the most unlike its peers is Mount Vernon Development Company 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.
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 28 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 93 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 MOUNT VERNON DEVELOPMENT COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds Mount Vernon Nazarene University ↗
- Who funds COOPER PARK DEVELOPMENT COMPANY ↗
- Who funds KNOX COUNTY LAND REUTILIZATION CORPORATI ↗
- Who funds Knox County Memorial Building Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF MOUNT VERNON OHIO ↗
- Who funds Knox County Foundation ↗
- Who funds WOODWARD DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE VILLAGE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds KNOX PARTNERSHIP FOR ARTS AND CULTURE INC ↗
- Who funds Knox County Head Start Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION PARK CONSERVANCY DBA ARIEL-FOUNDATION PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ALCOHOL AND DRUG FREEDOM CENTER OF KNOX COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MOUNT VERNON ARTS CONSORTIUM INC ↗
- Who funds OWL CREEK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds OHIO EASTERN STAR HOME ↗
- Who funds KNOX COUNTY LANDMARKS FOUNDATION IN ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE PLAY-SPACE INITIATIVE SPI ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KNOX COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE PARTNERS OF CENTRAL OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds NEWARK CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds THE WINTER SANCTUARY INC ↗
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: Knox County Foundation · United Way of Knox County Ohio Inc · Energy Cooperative Roundup Foundation Inc · Park National Corporation Foundation · Richard & Arline Landers Foundation · Peoples Bank Foundation · The Burgett Family Foundation · Elizabeth Ring Mather William Gwinn Mather Fund · Licking County Foundation Inc · Columbus Foundation · Ingram-White Castle Foundation · Ohio Child Care Resource and Referral Association
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 The Ariel Foundation 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Ariel Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ariel Foundation 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.