· Private foundation
The Nicely Ridge Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $308k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $481k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| URBAN IMPACT FOUNDATION | $133,667 |
| PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY | $110,000 |
| LIGONIER CAMP AND CONFERENCE CENTER | $77,000 |
| BOUNTIFUL AMERICAN FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| TRADE INSTITUTE OF PITTSBURGH | $50,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION | $50,000 |
| CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION | $40,000 |
| MT LEBANON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $37,998 |
| LIGHT OF LIFE RESCUE MISSION | $30,000 |
| LIVING STONES | $30,000 |
| COMMUNITY KITCHEN PITTSBURGH | $25,000 |
| GROW PITTSBURGH | $25,000 |
| CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY | $25,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $522k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 15% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +20% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 8 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $256k 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
- CMCarnegie Mellon University6× · 2018–2025 · $550k · revenue +64%
- TITRADE INSTITUTE OF PITTSBURGH4× · 2022–2025 · $200k · revenue +135%
- WPWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY8× · 2018–2025 · $122k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- TBTHE BRASHEAR ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -45%
- CMCARNEGIE MELLON - TEPPER SCHOOL OF BUSINESSone grant, 2023 · $50k
- AHAmerican Heart Association Incgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $40k · revenue +26%
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.
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…
We improve quality of life by enhancing and stewarding pittsburgh's parks in partnership with the community.
La roche university advances learning informed by ethical and service-oriented values, reflecting its catholic heritage and the charism of the sisters of divine providence.
The programs of leadership pittsburgh inc. (lpinc.) provide a continuum of civic engagement opportunities. the programs connect individuals from diverse backgrounds, professional levels, and organizations to learn about and serve the…
Youth enrichment services, inc. was founded in 1994 for the purpose of providing at-risk teens and low-income families residing in allegheny county a comprehensive in-home peer mentoring program, juvenile alternative to detention,…
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…
Provide information to decision maker in the pittsburgh region to promote economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental quality for sustainable solutions for communities and businesses.
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
To provide a means for sharing resources and information among members, engage in joint projects, and offer a common voice on educational matters.
The mission of the pittsburgh food policy council is to build a food system that benefits our communities, economy, and environment in ways that are just, equitable and sustainable. driven by community-led solutions, we bring together over…
To support education and research at college, university, and research libraries.
Cafe momentum pittsburgh transforms young lives by equipping the community's most at-risk youth with life skills, education and employment opportunities to help them achieve their full potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Urban Impact Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Cornerstone Christian Academy 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 35 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 55 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 LIGONIER CAMP & CONFERENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Mellon University ↗
- Who funds TRADE INSTITUTE OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds LIGHT OF LIFE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN IMPACT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds STEM CODING LAB INC ↗
- Who funds Pittsburgh Botanic Garden ↗
- Who funds LIVING STONES ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds BOUNTIFUL AMERICAN FOUNDATION INC DBA AMERICAN MOBILITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds LET GROW INC ↗
- Who funds SCOTT CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE BRASHEAR ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds GROW PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds MT LEBANON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY KITCHEN PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds Cornerstone Christian Academy 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 Pittsburgh Foundation · The Grable Foundation · Richard King Mellon Foundation · Hillman Family Foundations · The United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania · Eqt Foundation · Massey Charitable Trust · McCune Foundation Pnc Bank Na · Allegheny Foundation · Howard & Nell E Miller Foundat · McElhattan Foundation · The Heinz Endowments
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 Nicely Ridge 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 Nicely Ridge Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Nicely Ridge 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.