· Private foundation
The Ball Family 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 · $29k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $126k
- $250k+2 grants · $750k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA | $500,000 |
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| US SQUASH FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| SALISBURY SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| PRESERVATION FOUNDATION OF PALM BEACH | $25,000 |
| PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS | $11,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SQUASHBUSTERS | $10,000 |
| BRYN MAWR HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| FIRSTSERVE | $10,000 |
| CHARITY FOR THE ARTS SPORTS & EDUCATION (CHASE) | $7,500 |
| FRIENDS OF HARVARD SQUARE | $5,000 |
| BATH & TENNIS CLUB HISTORIC BUILDING PRESERVATION FOUNDATION INC | $5,000 |
| THE HAVERFORD SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| MURAL ARTS PHILADELPHIA | $3,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 71% of your 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +33% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 5 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, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $285k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND3× · 2020–2022 · $2.3M · revenue +17%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA4× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +62%
- TCTHE COBBS CREEK RESTORATION AND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION3× · 2020–2022 · $1.0M · revenue +424%
Funded once
- WPWEST PALM GOLF COMMUNITY TRUST INCone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -43%
- DUDREXEL UNIVERSITYone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +18%
- SSSHIPLEY SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $150k · revenue +18%
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.
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives. [text in quotations is taken from the academy's deed of gift, drafted in 1781] knowledge and goodness "above all, it is expected that the attention…
A preschool through 12th grade, private, college preparatory school. the school's mission statement is "together, cultivating the best in each for the benefit of all."
See schedule owe are an inclusive community on a mission to inspire unbounded curiosity and independent thought in every one of our students. in a unique educational environment that extends well beyond campus, we nurture students'…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
The masters school celebrates active participation, deep understanding, and meaningful connection. a community of diverse individuals, we gather to learn, to strive, to dare, to do - to be a power for good in the world.
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
The school is dedicated to excellence in the education of girls. our true mission, as reflected in our motto "non scholae sed vitae discimus," is learning & preparation for life.
Organization's mission bentley university believes good business can impact more than the bottom line - it can change the world. bentley is a community of future business leaders who will deliver value in the marketplace and lasting…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Partnership to End Addiction and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Harvard Square 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 46 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 49 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 UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THE COBBS CREEK RESTORATION AND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds THE BALDWIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES SQUASH RACQUETS ASSOC INC ↗
- Who funds WEST PALM GOLF COMMUNITY TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds SHIPLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SALISBURY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds SQUASH AND EDUCATION ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach Inc ↗
- Who funds CRANE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds STREETSQUASH INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Friends of Harvard Square Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BRYN MAWR HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SQUASHBUSTERS INC ↗
- Who funds CHARITY FOR THE ARTS SPORTS & EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League of the Palm Beaches Inc ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP TO END ADDICTION ↗
- Who funds City Squash Inc ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Natural Lands Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds BATH & TENNIS HISTORIC BUILDING PRESERVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MURAL ARTS ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds HAVERFORD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WOMEN GOLFERS GIVE BACK ↗
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: The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Philadelphia Foundation · The Anne and David B Ford Jr Foundation · Fleischner Family Charitable Foundation · Connelly Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Ball Family 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
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 Ball Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ball Family 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.