· Private foundation
The Gries Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k26 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $71k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $204k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS | $151,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $53,000 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $30,000 |
| MALTZ MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE | $11,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND BOTANICAL GARDENHOLDEN ARB | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE | $7,500 |
| VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE SERVICES | $6,000 |
| HAWKEN SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| JOSEPH SLIFKA CENTER FOR JEWISH LIFE | $5,000 |
| THE DIVERSITY CENTER | $5,000 |
| SMITH COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY | $4,000 |
| PHILANTHROPY OHIO | $2,521 |
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 (FY17–19, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +37% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2024, 22 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $151k · revenue +50%
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE5× · 2020–2024 · $135k · revenue +68%- TMThe Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage8× · 2017–2024 · $114k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- UHUNIVERSITY HOSPITALS SPORTS MEDICINEone grant, 2021 · $1.0M
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $38k
- TMTHE METROHEALTH FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $12k · revenue +71%
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.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The mission of cleveland leadership center (the organization) is to build a continuum of civic leaders committed to our community's excellence by serving as a catalyst for civic engagement. the organization achieves its mission by…
Mission: to champion and elevate the arts and cultural expression of greater columbus.vision: power of art realized. people engaged. city energized.
The cleveland arts prize identifies, rewards, publicly honors and promotes those creative artists whose original work and accomplishments have set a standard of excellence to which other artists can aspire. additionally, the cleveland arts…
The college of wooster is a community of independent minds, working together to prepare students to become leaders of character and influence in an interdependent global community. (continued on schedule o)we engage motivated students in a…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Capital university transforms lives by empowering an inclusive community of learners through engaging academic, co-curricular, and professional experiences.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
The city club of cleveland's mission is to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive. we do this in pursuit of our vision of strong, informed individuals and communities that prize freedom of speech and civil, civic…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Digestive Health Foundation. 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 62 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% 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.
51 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. 51 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 THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HAWKEN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN CLEVELAND ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds IDEASTREAM ↗
- Who funds JOSEPH SLIFKA CENTER FOR JEWISH LIFE AT ↗
- Who funds LAND STUDIO INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds John Carroll University ↗
- Who funds Playhouse Square Foundation ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THE METROHEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPY OHIO ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds BORDERLIGHT INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds THE HOLDEN ARBORETUM ↗
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 Cleveland Foundation · John P Murphy Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · The George Gund Foundation · The Albert B & Audrey G Ratner Family Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · George Codrington Fdnhirtlena · The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation · Kulas Foundation · Emma R Fox Char Trust Mut Fds · Jack Joseph & Morton Mandel Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable 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 The Gries 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% 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.