· Private foundation
The Ross Family 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k102 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $102k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| United Way Lackawanna & Wayne Counties | $25,500 |
| First United Methodust Church of Germantown | $18,000 |
| WVIA Public TV & Radio | $15,000 |
| Covenant Presbyterian Church | $13,000 |
| Keystone College | $10,000 |
| Columbia University | $10,000 |
| Philharmonic Society of NE PA | $10,000 |
| United Way of SE PA | $7,500 |
| Planned Parenthood of Northeast PA | $6,500 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $6,000 |
| Johnson College | $6,000 |
| Everhart Museum | $5,000 |
| Countryside Conservancy | $5,000 |
| Boy Scouts of America NE PA Council | $4,200 |
| Tanglewood Friends of Music | $4,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $40k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
112 repeat relationships — 96 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 6 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- UWUNITED WAY OF LACKAWANNA WAYNE AND PIKE COUNTIES5× · 2021–2025 · $118k · revenue +25%
- QTQUINTESSENCE THEATRE GROUP INC5× · 2020–2024 · $95k · revenue +241%
- PSPHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF NEPA6× · 2020–2025 · $45k · revenue +95%
Funded once
- UWUnited Way Lackawanna Countyone grant, 2020 · $24k
- PMPLYMOUTH MEETING FRIENDS SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $8k · revenue -16%
- PPPlanned Parenthood of Northeastern PAone grant, 2023 · $4k
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.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
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…
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…
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The western pennsylvania conservancy protects and restores exceptional places to provide our region with clean waters and healthy forests, wildlife and natural areas for the benefit of present and future generations. the conservancy…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
To support education and research at college, university, and research libraries.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Philadelphia Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Exodus Prison & Aftercare Ministries. 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 52 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 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.
92 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. 92 of the 145 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 UNITED WAY OF LACKAWANNA WAYNE AND PIKE COUNTIES ↗
- Who funds QUINTESSENCE THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds KEYSTONE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF NEPA ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds COUNTRYSIDE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds JOHNSON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds EVERHART MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCE AND ART ↗
- Who funds WRC INC ↗
- Who funds GEISINGER COMMONWEALTH SCH OF MED ↗
- Who funds OUTREACH - CENTER FOR COMMUNITY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds SCRANTON AREA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Scranton ↗
- Who funds WHYY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE POOR ↗
- Who funds University of Scranton ↗
- Who funds Marywood University ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ABINGTON COMMUNITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ALLIED SERVICES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLYMOUTH MEETING FRIENDS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF NORTHEASTERN PA INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF LACKAWANNA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
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 Hawk Family Foundation · Moses Taylor Foundation Inc · Robert H Spitz Foundation · Scranton Area Foundation Inc · Walter L Schautz Foundation · Margaret Briggs Foundation · Eureka Foundation · William G McGowan Charitable Fund · Northeastern Pennsylvania Health Care Foundation · Allone Foundation · The Cigna Group Foundation · Ppl 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 Ross Family 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Archaeological Institute of America — 1% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Inc — 1% 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 Ross Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ross Family 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.