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Plinth

· Private foundation

The Lewis a and Donna M Patterson Char Fdn

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$58k
Granted FY2025still arriving
12
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What you fund
0199% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172025.

Environment$102kHealth$100kHuman Services$74kArts & Culture$53kHousing & Shelter$25kEducation$23kAnimals$14kPublic Benefit$8kOther$0
02FY2025 · 12 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k11 grants · $48k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
$5,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$711k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
EYE & EAR FOUNDATION INC$10,000
NORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUTREACH INC$8,000
MAKE A WISH FDN GREATER PA WEST VA$5,000
SISTERS PLACE INC$5,000
PHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARD I$5,000
CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE PITTSBURGH$5,000
FRIENDS OF UT AVALANCHE FORECAST CETR IN$5,000
WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY$3,000
PITTSBURGH TRUST FOR CULTURAL RESOURCES$3,000
CLEAR THOUGHTS FOUNDATION$3,000
CITY THEATRE COMPANY INC$3,000
LITERACY PITTSBURGH$3,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%GUADALUPE SOCIAL SERVICES: $5k → 10%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PIT: $5k → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

86%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$359k · 17 repeat orgs$59k to everyone else

17 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

17
10

Total granted

$359k
$49k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+22%
+38%

Still filing today

76%
50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

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

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
Arts & CultureEducationEnvironmentHealthHuman ServicesHousing & ShelterOther

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

  • PC
    PHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS INC
    8× · 2018–2025 · $78k · revenue +11%
  • EA
    EYE AND EAR FOUNDATION
    8× · 2017–2025 · $68k · revenue +187%
  • WP
    WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY
    8× · 2017–2025 · $24k · revenue +70%

Funded once

  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2017 · $10k
  • EE
    EYE EAR FOUNDATION INC
    one grant, 2024 · $10k
  • CC
    CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PGH
    one grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue -15%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Point Park University

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…

2
Zoological Society of Pittsburgh

The zoological society of pittsburgh is dedicated to being a leader in, and significant contributor to, the conservation of endangered and threatened species. the society provides an enjoyable family experience that fosters understanding,…

Animals
3
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

We improve quality of life by enhancing and stewarding pittsburgh's parks in partnership with the community.

Recreation & Sports
4
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Inc

See schedule o for the description of pittsburgh ballet theatre inc.'s primary mission.the ballet is pittsburgh's source and ambassador for extraordinary ballet experiences that give life to the classical tradition, nurture new ideas and,…

Arts & Culture
5
University of Pittsburgh

The university of pittsburgh, founded in 1787, is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the united states and one of the nation's top public research universities. for more than two centuries, the university of pittsburgh…

Education
6
Pittsburgh Entertainment Project

To create a vibrant, responsible, and sustainable film and digital media sector in southwestern pennsylvania.

7
Artphilly

The mission of artphilly is to amplify philadelphia's arts and culture by commissioning, presenting, producing, and promoting art of all kinds for local audiences and the world. its vision is to spotlight(continued on schedule o)the city…

Arts & Culture
8
Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Inc

The mission of pittsburgh arts & lectures is to connect celebrated authors with the community, elevate civic discourse, and inspire creativity and a passion for the literary arts. our commitment to knowledge, learning, integrity, and…

Arts & Culture
9
Pittsburgh Council On Higher Education

To provide a means for sharing resources and information among members, engage in joint projects, and offer a common voice on educational matters.

Education
10
Scenic Pittsburgh

To protect, preserve, and promote the scenic resources of southwestern pennsylvania.

Environment
11
Pittsburgh International Classic Theatre

Challenging, educating and entertaining pittsburgh audiences by providing high quality theatre at reasonable prices, while focusing on irish, english and classical works.

Arts & Culture
12
The Friends of the Pittsburgh Institutions

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the most unlike its peers is Clear Thoughts Foundation. 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

18 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 18 of the 29 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
18/18
Grantees still filing
13/18
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF GREATER — $18,200 · OtherMAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF GREAT…NORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUTREACH INC — $18,000 · OtherNORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUTREACH …Individual grant recipient — $10,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipientEYE EAR FOUNDATION INC — $10,000 · OtherEYE EAR FOUNDATION INCMAKE-A-WISH GREATER PENNSYLVANIA — $8,800 · OtherMAKE-A-WISH GREATER PENNSYLVANI…MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF GREATER PENNSY — $8,800 · OtherMAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF GREAT…NORTH HILLS COMM OUTREACH — $8,000 · OtherNORTH HILLS COMM OUTREACHCATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE PITTSBURGH — $5,000 · OtherNORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUREACH INC — $5,000 · OtherARCHDIOCESE OF GALVESTON-HOUSTON — $5,000 · OtherMAKE A WISH FDN GREATER PA WEST VA — $5,000 · OtherCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PGH — $5,000 · OtherCATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF VENICE INC — $5,000 · Other+2 more — $3,500 · OtherPHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS INC — $78,000 · EnvironmentPHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOT…WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY — $23,600 · EnvironmentWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSER…EYE AND EAR FOUNDATION — $67,500 · HealthEYE AND EAR FOUNDATIONCLEAR THOUGHTS FOUNDATION — $22,100 · HealthCLEAR THOUGHTS FOUNDATIO…PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER CORPORATION — $23,500 · Arts & CulturePITTSBURGH PU…PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY INC — $10,500 · Arts & CulturePITTSBURGH SY…PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST — $8,000 · Arts & CulturePITTSBURGH CU…The City Theatre Company Inc — $5,500 · Arts & CultureThe City Thea…RADIANT HALL STUDIOS — $2,500 · Arts & CultureSISTERS PLACE INC — $25,000 · Housing & ShelterFRIENDS OF UTAH AVALANCHE FORE CAST CENTER INC — $12,000 · EducationLITERACY PITTSBURGH — $8,000 · EducationREADING IS FUNDAMENTAL PITTSBURGH — $3,000 · EducationNATIONAL AVIARY IN PITTSBURGH INC — $13,500 · Animals
Other$115,300Environment$101,600Health$89,600Arts & Culture$50,000Housing & Shelter$25,000Education$23,000Animals$13,500

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetPHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS INC — $78,000 over 8y, 0.1% of budgetEYE AND EAR FOUNDATION — $67,500 over 8y, 0.3% of budgetSISTERS PLACE INC — $25,000 over 6y, 0.4% of budgetWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY — $23,600 over 8y, 0.0% of budgetPITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER CORPORATION — $23,500 over 6y, 0.1% of budgetCLEAR THOUGHTS FOUNDATION — $22,100 over 9y, 2.4% of budgetNORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUTREACH INC — $18,000 over 3y, 0.2% of budgetNATIONAL AVIARY IN PITTSBURGH INC — $13,500 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetFRIENDS OF UTAH AVALANCHE FORE CAST CENTER INC — $12,000 over 4y, 0.3% of budgetPITTSBURGH SYMPHONY INC — $10,500 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetLITERACY PITTSBURGH — $8,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetPITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST — $8,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetThe City Theatre Company Inc — $5,500 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PGH — $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF VENICE INC — $5,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetREADING IS FUNDAMENTAL PITTSBURGH — $3,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetRADIANT HALL STUDIOS — $2,500 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetWESTMORELAND COUNTY FOOD BANK INC — $500 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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 PHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS INC
  • Who funds EYE AND EAR FOUNDATION
  • Who funds SISTERS PLACE INC
  • Who funds WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY
  • Who funds PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER CORPORATION
  • Who funds CLEAR THOUGHTS FOUNDATION
  • Who funds NORTH HILLS COMMUNITY OUTREACH INC
  • Who funds NATIONAL AVIARY IN PITTSBURGH INC
  • Who funds FRIENDS OF UTAH AVALANCHE FORE CAST CENTER INC
  • Who funds PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY INC
  • Who funds LITERACY PITTSBURGH
  • Who funds PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST
  • Who funds The City Theatre Company Inc
  • Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PGH
  • Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF VENICE INC
  • Who funds READING IS FUNDAMENTAL PITTSBURGH
  • Who funds RADIANT HALL STUDIOS
  • Who funds WESTMORELAND COUNTY FOOD BANK 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.

Hillman Family FoundationsPA27.7× affinity11 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Hillman Family Foundations · The Pittsburgh Foundation · The Grable Foundation · Richard King Mellon Foundation · The United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania · The Heinz Endowments · Eqt Foundation · Howard & Nell E Miller Foundat · The Burke Family Foundation · The Burke Foundation · Snee-Reinhardt Charitable Foundation · The Jack Buncher 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 Lewis a and Donna M Patterson Char Fdn 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%4%8%11%15%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    7report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 29 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph