· Private foundation
The Michelle Wightman-Karrie Wieber Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 69% of THE MICHELLE WIGHTMAN-KARRIE WIEBER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k58 grants · $175k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $175k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF SANDUSKY | $30,000 |
| CAMBELL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY CENTER | $25,000 |
| OHGO | $20,000 |
| SANDUSKY BLUE STREAK BOOSTERS CLUB | $15,000 |
| ERIE CO PUBLIC DEFENDER'S OFFICE | $14,000 |
| MARGARETTA MIDDLE SCHOOL | $11,000 |
| OHGO | $10,000 |
| SANDUSKY STATE THEATRE | $10,000 |
| ERIE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT | $10,000 |
| CITY OF SANDUSKY | $10,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| FAMILY HEALTH SERVICES | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $9,000 |
| ERIE RESIDENTIAL LIVING | $6,907 |
| ERIE COUNTY CASA PROGRAM | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $79k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of The Michelle Wightman-Karrie Wieber Charitable 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. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 92% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +57% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
94 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2025, 51 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $59k 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
- OOH-GO9× · 2017–2025 · $170k · revenue ×13
- SSSANDUSKY STATE THEATRE INC8× · 2017–2025 · $150k · revenue +101%
- BGBowling Green State University Foundation Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $80k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- GEGREATER ERIE CO MARKETING GROUP CHRone grant, 2024 · $20k
- ECEIRE COUNTY BOARD OF DEVELOPMENTALone grant, 2018 · $12k
- LCLORAIN COUNTY ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE SERVICES INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +5%
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.
To facilitate both the creation and retention of jobs within erie county and increase economic opportunities for individuals and businesses through comprehensive economic development programs.
A non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, restoration, enhancement, and sustainable development of the lake erie watershed in pennsylvania.
To develop and implement a marketing plan to grow the region's tourism economy through promotion of the region and thereby increase visitor spending in the region.
To lead erie's economic evolution through access, advocacy and awareness.
The erie community foundation works to improve the quality of life for all in our region by evaluating and addressing community issues, building permanent charitable endowments, and by promoting philanthropic and community leadership.
To increase the organized capacity for people to care for one another.
To provide emergency medical services with advanced and basic life support capabilities, ambulance transportation services, and providing trained personnel to assist local fire departments.
The mission of the Erie Chamber of Commerce is to unite community and commerce
Erie Independence House, Inc. (EIH) exists to enhance and promote independence in people with disabilities through the provision of accessible, affordable, adaptive housing necessary for them to lead productive, independent lives. We offer…
To provide support to the terminally ill
Erie homes for children and adults operates as a private, non-profit agency providing programs for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Erie County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lorain County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services 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 28 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 204 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 OH-GO ↗
- Who funds ERIE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANDUSKY STATE THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Bowling Green State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SANDUSKY EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FIRELANDS REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds FIRELANDS HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds FIRELANDS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds CARE & SHARE INC OF ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BACK TO THE WILD INC ↗
- Who funds CAMPBELL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds STEIN HOSPICE SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds SANDUSKY BLUE STREAK BOOSTERS CLUB ↗
- Who funds KINSHIP INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds ERIE COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CO INC ↗
- Who funds CANCER SERVICES FKA CANCER SERVICES OF ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP ERIE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds SERVING OUR SENIORS INC ↗
- Who funds Erie Residential Living 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 Mylander Fdn-2001 · Erie County Community Foundation · Sidney Frohman Foundation · Randolph J and Estelle M Dorn Foundation · The Wm M & a Cafaro Family Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · The Albert G & Olive H Schlink Foundation · The Twenty First Century Foundation · The Murray & Murray Charitable Foundation · Sam S Stein and Rose Stein Foundation · Patrick Murray and Louise E Murray Charitable Foundation · The Hogrefe 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 Michelle Wightman-Karrie Wieber Charitable 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 Michelle Wightman-Karrie Wieber Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Michelle Wightman-Karrie Wieber Charitable 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.