· Private foundation
The Hermes Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $29k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $29,000 |
| ST PAUL'S CLEVELAND HEIGHTS | $7,500 |
| LAMBDA LEGAL | $5,000 |
| LITERARY CLEVELAND | $5,000 |
| NORTHEAST OHIO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS | $3,000 |
| MED GLOBAL | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK | $2,500 |
| GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $2,000 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| IDEASTREAM | $1,500 |
| ST JAMES PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $1,200 |
| CLEVELAND CHAMBER CHOIR | $1,200 |
| SHAKER HEIGHTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $1,000 |
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, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, 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.
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 -1% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 13 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
- CMCLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART6× · 2020–2025 · $99k · revenue +23%
- TRTHE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2025 · $22k · revenue +92%
- LCLiterary Cleveland4× · 2021–2025 · $8k · revenue +102%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF MUSIC ST PAUL'S CHURCHone grant, 2024 · $2k
- LCLGBT CENTER OF GREATER CLEVELANDone grant, 2024 · $1k
- LFLEAD FOR EARTHone grant, 2023 · $1k
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 Cleveland Orchestra inspires and enriches lives by creating extraordinary musical experiences at the highest level of artistic excellence.
To enrich lives through modern and contemporary art.
Western reserve historical society preserves and uses its collections, historic sites, and museums to inspire people to discover the american experience by exploring the tangible history of northeast ohio.
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
To preserve, develop, and share historic dunham tavern and its campus as an educational and cultural resource. we aspire for dunham tavern as an institution to provide an urban green space in midtown cleveland, and to return the tavern to…
Shaker museum elevates shaker material culture to animate shaker values and beliefs and inspire individuals and communities to deepen bonds and seek meaningful approaches to social, economic, environmental, and spiritual issues.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
To inspire, through science and education, a passion for nature, the protection of natural diversity, the fostering of health, and leadership to a sustainable future.
The architectural league of new york supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. as a vital, independent forum, the league stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today's (continued on…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
Moca's mission- art now, in progress - embodies our nature as a living, adaptive platform for artistic experimentation, public exchange, and civic connection. our vision - artists & art lead us to the unfamiliar, where we open and connect…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is City of Asylum and the most unlike its peers is Tappan Lake Volunteer Fire Department 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 46 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 50 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 CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAMBDA LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Literary Cleveland ↗
- Who funds CITY OF ASYLUM ↗
- Who funds IDEASTREAM ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND CHAMBER CHOIR ↗
- Who funds MedGlobal Inc ↗
- Who funds Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society ↗
- Who funds URSULINE PIAZZA ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST OHIO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND RESTORATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND ART AT TRINITY CATHEDRAL INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE DECORATIVE ARTS TRUST ↗
- Who funds John Carroll University ↗
- Who funds SHAKER LAKES REGIONAL NATURE CENTER DBA NATURE CENTER AT SHAKER LAKES ↗
- Who funds Tappan Lake Volunteer Fire Department Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND ANIMAL PROTECTIVE LEAGUE ↗
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 · The George Gund Foundation · Higley Fund of the Cleveland Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Hermes 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.