· Private foundation
The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k43 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k19 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+7 grants · $7.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $2,000,000 |
| MUSICAL ARTS ASSOCIATION | $1,200,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $1,000,000 |
| THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $1,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS | $1,000,000 |
| HOSPICE OF THE WESTERN RESERVE | $530,000 |
| CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC | $275,000 |
| THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $205,000 |
| DOWNTOWN CLEVELAND ALLIANCE | $70,000 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE FOUNDATION | $63,500 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO | $60,000 |
| FIELDSTONE FARM THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER | $60,000 |
| SAINT MARTIN DE PORRES HIGH SCHOOL | $60,000 |
| ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME | $60,000 |
| CLEVELAND LEADERSHIP CENTER | $59,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +34% since the first grant, against -7% for the ones you funded once.
86 repeat relationships — 73 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 2 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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 ART5× · 2020–2024 · $9.2M · revenue +23%
- GCGREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC5× · 2020–2024 · $4.1M · revenue +10%
- TMThe Musical Arts Association5× · 2020–2024 · $3.4M · revenue +45%
Funded once
- MAMANUFACTURING ADVOCACY & GROWTH NETWORK INCone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue -15%
- CZCLEVELAND ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETYone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +13%
- CSCLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $250k · revenue +109%
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.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.
The cleveland arts prize identifies, rewards, publicly honors and promotes those creative artists whose original work and accomplishments have set a standard of excellence to which other artists can aspire. additionally, the cleveland arts…
Greater cleveland volunteers enriches the community and indivuduals through volunteer service. volunteers age 18 and older are recruited and placed in the agency's programs or referred to local nonprofit or public organizations to help…
Mission: to champion and elevate the arts and cultural expression of greater columbus.vision: power of art realized. people engaged. city energized.
Empower the people of greater cleveland to achieve success through technology, innovation and connected community.
Clci facilitates the ongoing engagement of the greater cincinnati community to promote the development of all schools as community learning centers, each with a set of financially self-sustaining, co-located community partners.
The cleveland transformation alliance (cta) is a trusted community partner working to ensure every student is engaged in a high-quality, equitable education. the cta gives families and students the information they need to commit to their…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Developing and improving Cleveland Ohio's civic visions.
Capital university transforms lives by empowering an inclusive community of learners through engaging academic, co-curricular, and professional experiences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Promise of Greater Cleveland and the most unlike its peers is The Strongsville Emergency Food Bank Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 48 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
90 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. 90 of the 102 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 GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds The Musical Arts Association ↗
- Who funds THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF THE WESTERN RESERVE INC ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MANUFACTURING ADVOCACY & GROWTH NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN CLEVELAND ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds FIELDSTONE FARM THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds LAWRENCE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds GREAT LAKES THEATER FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds Playhouse Square Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT ↗
- Who funds CONSERVANCY FOR CUYAHOGA VALLEY NATIONAL PARK ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds IDEASTREAM ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND SOCIETY FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE NATURE AND SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR ARTS-INSPIRED LEARNING ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND LEADERSHIP CENTER ↗
- Who funds LAND STUDIO INC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND HEARING AND SPEECH CENTER ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds LAKEVIEW CEMETERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Saint Martin de Porres High School ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOORS INC ↗
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 George Gund Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · The Swagelok Foundation · John P Murphy Foundation · George Codrington Fdnhirtlena · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · The Louise H & David S Ingalls Fdn · The Nord Family Foundation · The Lozick Family Foundation · Treu Mart Fund
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 Kelvin & Eleanor Smith 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 Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith 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.