Skip to content

· Private foundation

The Helene Bush Trust

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$249k
Granted FY2022
4
Grants FY2022
1
States reached
$120k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2022.

Religion$214kEducation$129kHealth$29kHuman Services$18kPublic Safety & Disaster$10k
02FY2022 · 4 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2022

  • Under $10k2 grants · $9k
  • $50k–250k2 grants · $240k
$120,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$34k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY$120,000
SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH$120,000
ADULT INTEREST CENTER$5,000
LEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION$4,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–22) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%LEARING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $8k → 11%LEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $5k → 11%LEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $4k → 11%LEARING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $4k → 11%LEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $4k → 11%LEARING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION: $4k → 11%MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY: $120k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $120k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH: $36k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $35k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH: $11k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH: $7k → 11%SOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH: $6k → 11%ADULT INTEREST CENTER: $5k → 11%ADULT INTEREST CENTER: $5k → 11%ADULT INTEREST CENTER - SOUTHMINSTER: $4k → 11%MEDICAL RESCUE TEAM SOUTH: $4k → 11%MEDICAL RESCUE TEAM SOUTH: $4k → 11%FRIENDS OF THE MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY: $3k → 11%MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY: $3k → 11%ADULT INTEREST CENTER - SOUTHMINSTER: $2k → 11%ADULT INTEREST CENTER - SOUTHMINSTER: $2k → 11%FRIENDS OF THE MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY: $2k → 11%FRIENDS OF THE MT LEBANON PUBLIC LIBRARY: $2k → 11%MEDICAL RESCUE TEAM SOUTH: $1k → 11%MEDICAL RESCUE TEAM SOUTH: $1k → 11%MEDICAL RESCUE TEAM SOUTH: $1k → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$400k · 8 repeat orgs$0 to everyone else

8 repeat relationships: 4 still active in FY2022, 4 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

8
0

Total granted

$400k
$0

Still filing today

25%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • SP
    SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
    2× · 2021–2022 · $155k
  • ML
    Mt Lebanon Public Library
    2× · 2021–2022 · $123k
  • SP
    SOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH
    4× · 2017–2020 · $59k

Funded once

    How this is measured

    Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

    04Its field
    04the grantee network

    2 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

    Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

    How this is measured

    Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 2 of the 8 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

    Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

    0
    Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
    1
    Early backer (in before they grew)
    2/2
    Grantees still filing
    2/2
    Grew since first funded

    Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

    SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $155,000 · OtherSOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHMt Lebanon Public Library: $122,500 · OtherMt Lebanon Public LibrarySOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH: $59,000 · OtherSOUTHMINSTER PRESB CHURCH+4 more: $34,000 · Other+4 moreLEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION OF AMERICA: $29,000 · Education
    Other$370,500Education$29,000

    Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

    25%50%75%100%grantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetLEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION OF AMERICA: $29,000 over 6y, 19% of budget
    Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

    A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

    • Who funds LEARNING DISABILITIES FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
    • Who funds Friends of the Mt Lebanon Public Library ↗

    How much its grantees rely on government

    Each dot is one organization The Helene Bush Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Helene Bush Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

    2025
    ’20’21’22’23’24’25
    no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
      no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
      0get no government money at all
      0rely on government for over half their income
      ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
      typical government reliance, FY20–25
      How this is measured
      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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

      On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 8 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

      How this is measured
      Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

      Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

      Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2022, the most recent year this funder made grants.

      Source object · view filing

      Play a game based on Helene Bush’s filings →

      More from the funding graph