How much does The John and Shirley Davies Foundation give?

The John and Shirley Davies Foundation reported 19 grants totaling $23,877 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 10 and 24 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The John and Shirley Davies Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Health (28%), Human Services (20%), Youth Development (11%).

Who are The John and Shirley Davies Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: COTA - Children's Organ Transplant Association ($22k), Sacred Selections ($17k), Building Blocks Foundation ($16k).

Does The John and Shirley Davies Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 33% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The John and Shirley Davies Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as The John and Shirley Davies Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Johnson Charitable Gift Fund, The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Ge Aerospace Foundation.

Where is The John and Shirley Davies Foundation based?

The John and Shirley Davies Foundation is based in OH.

The John and Shirley Davies Foundation

The John and Shirley Davies Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The John and Shirley Davies Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$24k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$3k

Largest

01What it funds

0190% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Health$60kHuman Services$42kYouth Development$23kFood & Nutrition$21kCrime & Legal$16kPhilanthropy$16kEducation$6kInternational$5kOther$0

02FY2025 · 19 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$208k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
COTA CHILDREN'S ORGAN TRANSPLANT ASSOCIATION INC	$3,000
SACRED SELECTIONS	$2,600
MATTHEW 25 MINISTRIES INC	$2,000
COTA CHILDREN'S ORGAN TRANSPLANT ASSOCIATION INC	$1,500
BIG BROTHERS & BIG SISTERS OF GREATER CINCINNATI INC	$1,000
BIG BROTHERS & BIG SISTERS OF GREATER CINCINNATI INC	$1,000
SAFE HAVEN FARMS	$1,000
DAV-DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS	$1,000
LOVELAND LIFE FOOD PANTRY	$1,000
OHIO VALLEY VOICES INC	$1,000
PROKIDS	$1,000
PROKIDS	$1,000
Individual grant recipient	$1,000
HOSPICE OF CINCINNATI	$1,000
SACRED SELECTIONS	$1,000

02The need

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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $33k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 59% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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.

Which US states its grants reach

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.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$192k · 27 repeat orgs$21k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +46% since the first grant, against +25% for those funded once.

27 repeat relationships: 10 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$192k

$18k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+46%

+25%

Still filing today

63%

69%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Human ServicesHealthEducationArts & CultureCrime & LegalPhilanthropyOther

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

SS
SACRED SELECTIONS
8× · 2018–2025 · $17k · revenue +93%
BB
Building Blocks Foundation
7× · 2017–2025 · $16k · revenue +37%
SH
SAFE HAVEN FARMS INC
8× · 2018–2025 · $15k · revenue +46%

Funded once

SP
SAMARITAN'S PURSE
one grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%
PF
PRISON FELLOWSHIP
one grant, 2024 · $2k
BC
BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC
one grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +4%

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

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Coalition of Care Greater Cincinnati

Coalition of Care of Greater Cincinnati exists to mobilize churches and to inspire volunteers to care for vulnerable children and fragile families.

Youth Development

Hope for Cleveland's Children

—

Payton's Lemonade Stand

To empower the next generation of philanthropists by harnessing the power of kids serving kids.

Philanthropy

Advocates for Kids

Advocates for Kids is committed to providing service and/or supporting organizations that serve children by providing experiences that empower them to realize their full potential. Advocates for Kids envisions children achieving a clearer…

Youth Development

Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio

Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio serves and empowers people through God's love in their times of vulnerability. We do so through a full range of local services that engage the community in building solidarity.

Human Services

Choices for Victims of Domestic Violence

To create a better world by serving people in need by operating food pantries, homeless shelters, a domestic violence shelter, affordable housing communities, senior living, assisted living and skilled care facilities, a home health care…

Human Services

Cincinnati Union Bethel

Empowering women to break the cycles of poverty, addiction, and human trafficking.

Human Services

Caring for Kids Inc

Caring for kids, inc. (cfk) is a private, non-profit, full-service adoption and foster care agency operating since 1995. cfk specializes in diverse and inclusive birth parent, foster care, adoption and behavioral health services. our…

Human Services

Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati

To resolve serious legal problems of low income people, to promote economic and family stability, and reduce poverty through effective legal assistance.

—

Cumberland Medical Center

Cumberland Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health, regardless of the patient's ability to pay.

Health

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

Philanthropy

Cain Cincy

Tranforms lives inspiring hope by providing nutritious food,crisis assistance,resources and compassion that respects human dignity building a more vibrant community. feeding bodies and souls through its choice food pantry,weekly community…

Religion

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Coverd Greater Cincinnati; the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

28 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. 28 of the 42 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

27/28

Grantees still filing

20/28

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$112,500Human Services$32,922Philanthropy$15,500Housing & Shelter$15,000Civil Rights$14,000International$12,500Health$10,500

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

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.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Johnson Charitable Gift FundOH29.2× affinity12 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Johnson Charitable Gift Fund · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Elsa M Heisel Sule Charitable Trust 2005 · Duke Energy Foundation · William P Anderson Foundation Central Trust · The Thomas J Emery Memorial · The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation Co Fifth Third Bank Na Agent · Sutphin Family Foundation Ica · Millstone Fund · The Scripps Howard Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The John and Shirley Davies Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The John and Shirley Davies Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The John and Shirley Davies Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The John and Shirley Davies 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.

Play a game based on John and Shirley Davies’ filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home