· Private foundation
The Henry A and Mary J MacDonald Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 49% of The Henry A and Mary J MacDonald Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $167k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hamot Health Foundation | $50,000 |
| St Martin Center Inc | $40,000 |
| Sarah A Reed Children's Center | $40,000 |
| Community Shelter Services | $17,000 |
| Erie Philharmonic Inc | $15,000 |
| Erie Civic Theatre Association | $15,000 |
| Bayfront NATO Inc | $10,000 |
| Shriners Hospital for Children | $10,000 |
| Booker T Washington Center | $10,000 |
| Community Blood Bank of Erie County | $10,000 |
| Emmaus Ministries Soup Kitchen | $5,000 |
| Build Better Fields | $5,000 |
| Erie City Mission | $5,000 |
| Ella Cochran Food Pantry | $5,000 |
| Early Connections Inc | $5,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–25, $235k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
13 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- SMSt Martin Center6× · 2020–2025 · $178k · revenue +28%
- EPErie Philharmonic Inc5× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +48%
- BTBOOKER T WASHINGTON CENTER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $58k · revenue +105%
Funded once
- SHSecond Harvest Food Bankone grant, 2020 · $25k
- ACACHIEVEMENT CENTER INCone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue +18%
- EAERIE ART MUSEUMgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue +65%
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.
To facilitate both the creation and retention of jobs within erie county and increase economic opportunities for individuals and businesses through comprehensive economic development programs.
Erie Independence House, Inc. (EIH) exists to enhance and promote independence in people with disabilities through the provision of accessible, affordable, adaptive housing necessary for them to lead productive, independent lives. We offer…
To provide emergency medical services with advanced and basic life support capabilities, ambulance transportation services, and providing trained personnel to assist local fire departments.
A non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, restoration, enhancement, and sustainable development of the lake erie watershed in pennsylvania.
The mission is to establish nurturing and sustained relationships with individuals, families and community stakeholders to foster growth, self-efficancy and independence by providing innovative evidenced based treatment focused on a whole…
To focus all available local, state, private and federal resources upon the goal of enabling low income families and low income individual of all ages to obtain the skills knowledge and motivations, and secure the opportunities needed for…
Community Access Media allows individuals access to the tools of media production, training, the space and the channel to address the needs of this community.
The mission of the Erie Chamber of Commerce is to unite community and commerce
Promote economic growth, education and job training opportunities, and enhance the quality of life in distressed, low-income neighborhoods in the urban erie area - minority & low-income individuals served.
Erie homes for children and adults operates as a private, non-profit agency providing programs for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is City Mission of the Evangelical Churches of Erie and the most unlike its peers is Build Better Fields Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 20 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 SARAH A REED CHILDREN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds HAMOT HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds St Martin Center ↗
- Who funds Erie Philharmonic Inc ↗
- Who funds BOOKER T WASHINGTON CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ERIE CIVIC THEATRE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BAYFRONT NATO INC ↗
- Who funds EARLY CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Community Shelter Services Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY BLOOD BANK OF ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BUILD BETTER FIELDS INC ↗
- Who funds ACHIEVEMENT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ERIE ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES OF ERIE ↗
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: Erie Community Foundation · M J Surgala Tr · The Britton Family Foundation · Wabtec Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Merwin Foundation · United Way of Erie County · Northwest Charitable Foundation · McBrier Foundation · Kern Family Foundation Inc · Vorsheck Family Foundation Inc · Second Harvest Food Bank of Nw Pa 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 Henry A and Mary J MacDonald 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 Henry A and Mary J MacDonald Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Henry A and Mary J MacDonald 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.