· Private foundation
The Kerscher Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $42k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $58k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LET THEM LIVE | $18,000 |
| SANIBEL SEA SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| THE CELIAC AND ALLERGY FRIENDLY FOOD INITIATIVE | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC PHILANTHROPY | $10,000 |
| VILLA ANGELA-ST JOSEPH HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| THE EDGE SPORTS & ARTS ACADEMY | $7,000 |
| CRU | $5,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHARM- CHILDREN ARE MAGICAL | $5,000 |
| CHRIST COMMUNITY CHAPEL | $5,000 |
| OPEN M | $5,000 |
| TRANS WORLD RADIO | $2,500 |
| ISAIAH 117 HOUSE | $2,500 |
| YWAM TYLER | $2,500 |
| PIONEER BIBLE TRANSLATORS | $2,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $133k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +48% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 8 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- ONOhio Northern University5× · 2017–2022 · $178k · revenue +27%
- LTLET THEM LIVE ACTION CORPORATION4× · 2020–2024 · $63k · revenue +306%
FISH OF SANIBEL-CAPTIVA INC4× · 2018–2023 · $43k · revenue +111%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLSone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -30%
- HHHELPING HANDS MINISTRY INCone grant, 2019 · $15k
- FPFUSION POINTE INCone grant, 2017 · $10k
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.
Otterbein University is an inclusive community dedicated to educating the whole person in the context of humane values. Our mission is to prepare graduates to think deeply and broadly, to engage locally and globally, and to advance their…
As a school dedicated to excellence for his kingdom, the mission is equipping disciples through exemplary education.
Adoption network cleveland's mission is to connect and empower individuals, organizations, and communities impacted by adoption, kinship, and foster care, and we provide a source of healing for those in need.
Caring for life, researching for health and educating those who serve.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Emmanuel's mission is to provide instruction in god's word and conventional instruction that meets or exceeds state standards for all who desire a biblical foundation. to serve children who historically have been defined as at-risk of not…
Respond to those in need through an integrated system of quality services designed to respect the dignity of every person and build a just and compassionate society.
Create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.
Better together helps at-risk families by empowering parents and surrounding them with community, meaningful work opportunities, and practical support. our volunteer-driven, professionally supported model provides direct services so that…
See schedule o.carlow university, rooted in its catholic identity and embodying the heritage and values of the sisters of mercy, offers transformational educational opportunities for a diverse community of learners and empowers them to…
The mission of fuchs mizrachi school is to educate each child in the orthodox jewish religious zionist tradition, imbued with the love of g-d, torah, people and the land of israel.
Annie wright's strong community cultivates individual learners to become well-educated, creative and responsible citizens for a global society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Zonta Foundation for Women and the most unlike its peers is Ding Darling Wildlife Society 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 28 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 — 3% 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.
27 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. 27 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 Ohio Northern University ↗
- Who funds LET THEM LIVE ACTION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FISH OF SANIBEL-CAPTIVA INC ↗
- Who funds SANIBEL SEA SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MAIN STAGE COMMUNITY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds BLUFFTON SELF HELP INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds BULLDOG BAGS INC ↗
- Who funds FOSTERING FAITHFULLY ↗
- Who funds BLUE LINE BEARS INC ↗
- Who funds Pioneer Bible Translators ↗
- Who funds DROP IN THE BUCKET ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds RAYL CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds OUR RESCUE ↗
- Who funds DING DARLING WILDLIFE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY PARISH ECUMENICAL NEIGHBORHOOD MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST OHIO FOUNDATION FOR PATRIOTISM ↗
- Who funds Saint Martin de Porres High School ↗
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: Akron Community Foundation · The Swagelok Foundation · Fw Albrecht Family Foundation · Hudson Community Foundation · United Way of Summit and Medina · The Cleveland Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Kerscher Family 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 Kerscher Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kerscher Family 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.