· Private foundation
The Gessner 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k17 grants · $384k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $745k
- $250k+1 grant · $291k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $291,000 |
| STARK ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD | $100,000 |
| MASSILLON HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| SPRING HILL FARM | $100,000 |
| THE MASSILLON MUSEUM | $100,000 |
| ST JOHN'S UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST | $75,000 |
| STARK STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| BOYS' & GIRLS' CLUB OF MASSILLON | $60,000 |
| AKRON CANTON REGIONAL FOOD BANK | $50,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF WAYNE & HOLMES COUNTIES | $50,000 |
| MASSILLON PUBLIC LIBRARY | $50,000 |
| REFUGE OF HOPE MINISTRIES | $40,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MASSILLON PUBLIC LIBRARY | $40,000 |
| JUMP START INC | $38,750 |
| MASSILLON CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $35,500 |
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 (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 91% 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.
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 Gessner Family 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, 95% 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 +47% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 2 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; $51k 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
- MMMASSILLON MUSEUM5× · 2020–2024 · $558k · revenue +39%
- SESTARK ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD INC5× · 2020–2024 · $415k · revenue +1%
- MHMASSILLON HERITAGE FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $390k · revenue +49% · 93% of their budget
Funded once
- CCCLEVELAND CLINIC MERCY HOSPITALone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue 0%
- WAWILLIAM AND MARY MEN'S GYMNASTICS PROGRAMone grant, 2023 · $46k
- SPSOAP - PROJECT SAVE OUR ADOLESCENTSone grant, 2021 · $30k
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.
Support of the Stark County District Library
Economic development in starke county
Advancement of the economic, industrial, professional, cultural and civic welfare of stark county and its surrounding region and the promotion and preservation of the competitive free enterprise system.
To promote the revitalization of neighborhoods in stark county by leading partnership-based, neighborhood-specific, revitalization efforts and developing programs that support community reinvestment.
To identify, activate, and support informed and passionate philanthropists who strive to improve the quality of life in our community. we accomplish this by:- building a permanent source of charitable funding- cultivating strategic…
Stark County District Library is an award winning library that consists of Main Library, nine branch libraries and five (5) mobile units that serve over 189,000 cardholders. The Library provides programs and classes for adults, teens and…
Agricultural matters education
Lead sheboygan county's efforts to increase the food security of its residents by distributing healthy emergency food and fostering innovative partnerships.
Work for the general good of the community, to improve the administration of the law in the interests of the public, to promote good relations among the members of the bar, and to further the professional interests of its members.
The Massillon WestStark Chamber of Commerce exists to develop, enhance, and represent business, promote economic growth, and improve the quality of life for our community.
Ending homelessness in stark county ohio.
Helping individuals live with dignity through the final stage of life.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stark Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Navarre-Bethlehem Township Historical Society Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 44 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 42 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 MASSILLON MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds STARK ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD INC ↗
- Who funds MASSILLON HERITAGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AKRON-CANTON REGIONAL FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds STARK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WAYNE AND HOLMES CO ↗
- Who funds STARK STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Beacon Charitable Pharmacy Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MASSILLON PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds REFUGE OF HOPE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds BOYS' & GIRLS' CLUB OF MASSILLON INC ↗
- Who funds KENT STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUMPSTART INC ↗
- Who funds JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds STARK COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds A PLACE TO BE ↗
- Who funds Boys and Girls Club of Wooster Inc ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND CLINIC MERCY HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds STARKFRESH ↗
- Who funds Stark County Diaper Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds Stark County Hunger Task Force Inc ↗
- Who funds Mountain Rescue Aspen Inc ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY ORPHAN RELIEF ↗
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: Stark Community Foundation · Hoover Foundation Income Account · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Timken Foundation of Canton · The Paul and Carol David Foundation · Austin-Bailey Health & Wellness Foundation · United Way of Greater Stark County · Health Foundation of Greater Massillon · Diebold Employees Charitable Fd Ta · The Belden Brick Charitable Trust · Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton · Timken Co Charitable & Educational Fund
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 Gessner 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 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 Gessner Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Gessner 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.