· Private foundation
The Payne Fund
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k13 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $531k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $260k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS | $75,000 |
| MUSICAL ARTS ASSOCIATION | $75,000 |
| DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO | $60,000 |
| FRANCES PAYNE BOLTON SCHOOL OF NURSING | $50,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $40,000 |
| HOSPICE OF THE WESTERN RESERVE | $30,000 |
| DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO | $28,000 |
| BREVARD MUSIC CENTER | $25,000 |
| CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC | $25,000 |
| CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND | $25,000 |
| MOUNT VERNON LADIES ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF NE OHIO | $25,000 |
| BREVARD MUSIC CENTER | $25,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS | $25,000 |
| MOUNT VERNON LADIES ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $80k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of The Payne Fund’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.
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.
25 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 4 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k 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
- TMThe Musical Arts Association5× · 2020–2024 · $575k · revenue +45%
- DADECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO5× · 2020–2024 · $414k · revenue +70%
- BMBREVARD MUSIC CENTER INCORPORATED5× · 2020–2024 · $250k · revenue +115%
Funded once
- CMCITY MISSIONone grant, 2022 · $75k
- EDEPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF OHIOone grant, 2021 · $25k
- CMCLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +76%
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.
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
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…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
See schedule o.founded in 1866, carleton college is a private, coeducational liberal arts college of 2,007 students located in the historic river town of northfield, minnesota. nationally recognized as the nation's top college for…
Mills college is an independent liberal arts college for women and gender nonbinary students, with graduate programs for all genders. the college educates students to think critically and communicate responsibly and effectively, to accept…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The mission statement of the cleveland institute of art is as follows: to cultivate creative leaders who inspire people, strengthen communities, and contribute to a thriving and sustainable economy through an innovative education in art…
Through the power of art, we contribute to a more vibrant cincinnati by inspiring its people and connecting our communities.
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Theatre Du Reve 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 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 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.
31 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. 31 of the 44 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 The Musical Arts Association ↗
- Who funds DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO ↗
- Who funds BREVARD MUSIC CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds LAKEVIEW CEMETERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THEATRE DU REVE INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF THE WESTERN RESERVE INC ↗
- Who funds MYRIAD USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds Playhouse Square Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ASSOCIATION OF WEST MARIN ↗
- Who funds MARIN AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Portland Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds KWMR ↗
- Who funds VERNER INC ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Hospitality Homes Inc ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S HEALTH AND WELLNESS CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ENTERPRISE FOR YOUTH ↗
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: Kulas Foundation · John P Murphy Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · The Albert B & Audrey G Ratner Family Foundation · Martha Holden Jennings Foundation · The Nord Family Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc
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 Payne Fund 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.
- The American College of Greece — 2% of income from government
- People's Health and Wellness Clinic — 2% of income from government
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 Payne Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Payne Fund 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.