· Private foundation
The Hamer 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $424k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+7 grants · $3.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTERN PA CONSERVANCY | $680,000 |
| PA CHAPTER NATURE CONSERVANCY | $494,500 |
| STATE COLLEGE FOOD BANK | $460,000 |
| SCHLOW CENTRE REGION LIBRARY | $443,530 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FDTN | $420,000 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $317,000 |
| PENN STATE UNIVERSITY | $278,302 |
| AUDUBON SOCIETY PA | $150,000 |
| CENTRE COUNTY UNITED WAY | $125,000 |
| IUP RESEARCH INSTITUTE | $112,500 |
| CENTRE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $105,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| CENTRE FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| CENTRE COUNTY YOUTH SERVICE BUREAU | $90,000 |
| DISCOVERY SPACE | $86,250 |
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 (FY20–24, $790k) 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.
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.
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 +13% since the first grant, against -7% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 38 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $155k 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
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC5× · 2020–2024 · $2.7M · revenue +28%- FBFOOD BANK OF THE STATE COLLEGE AREA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $535k · revenue +64%
University of Chicago5× · 2020–2024 · $450k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- CCCHESAPEAKE CONSERVANCY INCone grant, 2023 · $500k · revenue -43%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $500k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $311k
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 mission of Central Pennsylvania Conservancy (CPC) is to acquire, preserve, and protect local land and natural resources in a five-county, South-Central PA region. Our vision is to create a local network of permanently protected and…
To coordinate services among private and government agencies for specialized populations to ensure service continuity, reduce duplication, and assist individuals and families in accessing appropriate mental health, intellectual…
The center for community action is the designated lead poverty agency for blair, bedford, fulton, and huntingdon counties in central pennsylvania and exists to provide a broad spectrum of services to the low income residents of the…
The center in the woods' mission is to provide the highest quality of life for older adults in southwestern pennsylvania.
C-net is organized to maintain and operated, on a not-for-profit basis, a government and education access network to inform the public on subjects useful and beneficial to the community via cable television channels and internet…
Private industry council of centre county, inc. partners with business, government, and non-profit entities throughout central pa to build strong communities. this is accomplished by providing grants management, fiscal services, program…
Centre county federation of public libraries (federation) is a non-profit organization that coordinates and oversees joint affairs of the public libraries in centre county, pennsylvania.
Licensed organization dedicated to caring for injured, orphaned, sick and displaced wildlife for the purpose of releasing them back into the wild.
To promote the well-being and growth of commerce, business and industry, while striving to maintain a high quality of life in centre county.
To preserve, facilitate, promote and foster economic development within cumberland county and the surrounding regions, by providing integrated economic development and tourism marketing services to, and on behalf of, the citizens of the…
To strengthen the competitiveness of center city philadelphia as an attractive place to work, to visit, and to live to enhance center city as the vibrant hub of the greater philadelphia region through research, planning, advocacy, and…
To promote successful business activity in the central bucks county, pa area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Centre Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Via. 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 31 years old; the field is 18. 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 — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 62 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 CLEARWATER CONSERVANCY OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE ↗
- Who funds CENTRE COUNTY UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF THE STATE COLLEGE AREA INC ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds IUP RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY SPACE OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds TRI-MUNICIPAL PARK INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRE COUNTY FARMLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds STRAWBERRY FIELDS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CLINTON COUNTY UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY HUNTINGDON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRE COUNTY YOUTH SERVICE BUREAU ↗
- Who funds CENTRE CARE INC ↗
- Who funds MID-STATE LITERACY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds NITTANY MOUNTAIN BIKING ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED SPRING CREEK CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds Friends of VIA ↗
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: Centre Foundation Inc · Northwest Charitable Foundation · The Blake and Linda Gall Family Foundation · Centre County United Way · The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau · The Poole Foundation · Firstenergy Foundation · Glenn O and Thelma M Hawbaker Family Foundation · The Louis E Silvi Foundation · Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds · Ferguson Foundation Inc · Port Family 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 Hamer 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.
- Chesapeake Conservancy Inc — 27% 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.