· Private foundation
The James Joseph Ford Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN'S LIFESAVING FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| HEAVEN CAN WAIT ANIMAL SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| CAPABILITY HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES | $5,000 |
| NSPCA | $3,000 |
| JACOBS HEART | $2,500 |
| QUEENS ACADEMY | $2,500 |
| ELEVATE YOUR GAME | $2,500 |
| FOSTER KINSHIP | $2,500 |
| OCEAN'S HARBOR HOUSE | $2,500 |
| BRIDGE BUILDERS LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE | $2,000 |
| LIVING GRACE HOMES | $2,000 |
| SWEET POTATO COMFORT PIE | $1,000 |
| GENTLEMEN BY CHOICE | $1,000 |
| THE DR SHIRLEY LINZY YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA OF LAS VEGAS | $1,000 |
| ST JUDE'S RANCH OF CHILDREN | $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 (FY18–24, $59k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The James Joseph Ford Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +59% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 13 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, 27% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- NBNEVADA BLIND CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION3× · 2019–2022 · $11k · revenue +167%
- LGLIVING GRACE HOMESINC3× · 2019–2024 · $11k · revenue +127%
- FKFOSTER KINSHIP6× · 2018–2024 · $11k · revenue +244%
Funded once
- BABAY AREA YOUTH RUGBY THE OAKLAND WAone grant, 2018 · $7k
- RIREADING IN MOTIONone grant, 2020 · $4k
- NYNEVADA YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROJECTone grant, 2020 · $4k · revenue -1%
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.
All children need a childhood. Allies for Every Child brings together and strengthens families, cultivating conditions for children to succeed in life. (Continues on Schedule O)
The mission of Wayfinder Family Services is to ensure that children, youth and adults facing challenges always have a place to turn. Founded in 1953 as the Foundation for the Junior Blind, the organization initially enabled visually…
Achievekids schools provide individualized and multi-disciplinary programs that deliver special education, mental health, and family support services for students ages 5 to 22 who have complex and often severe developmental, emotional, and…
New vista is committed to providing people of all ages with intellectual and developmental disabilities, equitable opportunities, and supported living arrangements so that they may experience life to the fullest.
To increase opportunities for home, community and school success for children with disabilities, including those who are at risk or who have serious emotional disturbances, their families and their service providers, through education,…
To support, encourage and educate families of deaf and hard of hearing children to empower them to make choices that will enable their children to achieve their full potential.
The mission of the eddy house is to provide at-risk youth the opportunity to reach their full potential as healthy individuals through a continuum of programs and services in northern nevada.
Through a holistic approach to emotional well-being, Wellnest offers hope, healing, and opportunity to the children, young adults, families, and communities we serve. Our commitment remains steadfast as we enter our second century of…
To provide high quality academics to k-5 students
Life quality of children and families, adults, and seniors, through advocacy and individualized services in collaboration with community partnerships.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Genesis and Light Center and the most unlike its peers is April Parker Foundation 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 25 years old; the field is 9. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 35% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 20% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 47 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 Tutwiler Community Education Center ↗
- Who funds NEVADA BLIND CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIVING GRACE HOMESINC ↗
- Who funds FOSTER KINSHIP ↗
- Who funds The Childrens Lifesaving Foundation ↗
- Who funds SPREAD THE WORD NEVADA ↗
- Who funds THE DR SHIRLEY LINZY YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA OF LAS VEGAS ↗
- Who funds READING IN MOTION ↗
- Who funds CAPABILITY HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds HEAVEN CAN WAIT ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NEVADA YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROJECT ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF NEVADA INC ↗
- Who funds Project Hope Alliance ↗
- Who funds Boys Town Nevada Inc ↗
- Who funds Be A Mentor Inc ↗
- Who funds ELEVATE YOUR G A M E ↗
- Who funds OCEAN'S HARBOR HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE BUILDERS LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds THE ANIMAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GENESIS AND LIGHT CENTER ↗
- Who funds Lead with Horses ↗
- Who funds SWEET POTATO COMFORT PIE ↗
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: Mgm Resorts Foundation · Dermody Properties Foundation · Canarelli Family Foundation · Engelstad Family Foundation · Nevada Community Foundation Inc · NV Energy Charitable Foundation · The Boyd Family Foundation · Wynn Resorts Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Frank and Victoria Fertitta Foundation Ltd · Robert S & Dorothy J Keyser Foundation · The Mel & Ruth Wolzinger 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 James Joseph Ford 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.
- Ocean's Harbor House Inc — 75% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The James Joseph Ford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The James Joseph Ford 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.