· Private foundation
The Pearce Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $99k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SALEM COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC | $29,000 |
| UNITED WAY WORLDWIDE | $25,000 |
| ALLEGHENY WESLEYAN COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| BALDWIN WALLACE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| THE BRIGHTSIDE PROJECT | $7,000 |
| THIEL COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT UNION | $5,000 |
| KENT STATE UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 85% of your 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.
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 +15% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 1 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- BPBRIGHTSIDE PROJECT INC6× · 2020–2025 · $38k · revenue +468%
- UOUniversity of Mount Union6× · 2018–2025 · $36k · revenue +33%
- ONOhio Northern University3× · 2022–2024 · $20k · revenue +1%
Funded once
- TCTHE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION OF SALEM COMMUNITY HOSPITALgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $60k · revenue +307% · 75% of their budget
- SASALVATION ARMYone grant, 2020 · $25k
- SCSALEM CITY SCHOOLSone grant, 2017 · $20k
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.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
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…
See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…
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…
Rooted in our Mercy Catholic liberal arts identity, we educate and inspire diverse learners in an environment where faith and reason flourish together for meaningful lives, dignified work, and leadership in service toward a just and loving…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Capital university transforms lives by empowering an inclusive community of learners through engaging academic, co-curricular, and professional experiences.
Through innovative learning opportunities, individual student attention, and an unwavering commitment to inclusive educational access, simpson college cultivates a diverse community of learners to lead lives of meaning and purpose.
Empowering our community of learners to discover and create better futures.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Virginia wesleyan university is a fully accredited liberal arts, united-methodist related institution founded in 1961.
Susquehanna university educates students for productive, creative and reflective lives of achievement, leadership, and service in a diverse, dynamic and interdependent world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Youngstown State University Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Salem Community Pantry. 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 68 years old; the field is 21. 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 9% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 47 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 SALEM COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds THE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION OF SALEM COMMUNITY HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds BRIGHTSIDE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds University of Mount Union ↗
- Who funds Ohio Northern University ↗
- Who funds WESTMINSTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SALEM HISTORICAL SOCIETY SALEM HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Baldwin Wallace University ↗
- Who funds THIEL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Salem Preservation Society ↗
- Who funds WESLEYAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Mellon University ↗
- Who funds SALEM COMMUNITY PANTRY ↗
- Who funds Walsh University Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE COLLEGE ↗
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: Salem Community Foundation Inc · The Wm M & a Cafaro Family Foundation · Premier Bank Foundation · Ella Weiss Educational Fund · Flor Navarro Family Foundation · Council of Independent Colleges · Charles Koch Foundation · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Firstenergy Foundation · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Pearce 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 Pearce Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Pearce 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.