· Private foundation
The Sears Swetland 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k36 grants · $163k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $155k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRAL LINCOLN YMCA | $30,000 |
| CWRU SWETLAND CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH | $20,000 |
| CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART | $15,000 |
| BIRTHING BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITIES | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| SMOKEY HOUSE CENTER | $10,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY OF VERMONT | $10,000 |
| WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| OHIO ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOOD PROGRESS | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| VERMONT PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP | $10,000 |
| SPICE FIELD KITCHEN | $5,000 |
| HATHAWAY BROWN SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $74k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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 +45% since the first grant, against -5% for the ones you funded once.
88 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2025, 51 since wound down; 10 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $73k 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
- WRWESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY9× · 2017–2025 · $290k · revenue +73%
- CMCLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY9× · 2017–2025 · $95k · revenue +31%
- TCTHE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART7× · 2019–2025 · $77k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- YYMCAone grant, 2024 · $30k
- CWCASE WESTERN RESERVEone grant, 2017 · $20k
- CSCASE SWETLAND CENTERone grant, 2021 · $15k
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.
Our mission is to enrich the lives of all people in northeast ohio by conserving natural habitats, restoring the ecological value of our region's lands and waters, and expanding opportunities to connect people from all cultures to…
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…
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
To support the long-term revitalization and care of neighborhoods through local partnerships that equip residents, businesses and organizations to improve economic opportunity and community well-being.
The conservancy engages community involvement through 1) programs and services to enhance the park visitor experience; 2) co-management of the park's award-winning "volunteer in parks" (vip) program; 3) education programs for school age…
To harness the collective expertise of ohio's ceos to advocate for policies that improve ohio's economic competitiveness.
Greater cleveland volunteers enriches the community and indivuduals through volunteer service. volunteers age 18 and older are recruited and placed in the agency's programs or referred to local nonprofit or public organizations to help…
Earth conservancy is a nonprofit organization committed to the reclamation and return of over 16,000 acres of former coal company-owned land to the region. it collaborates with local communities, government agencies, education…
Informing and educating the public and decision makers about environmental issues.
To benefit the general public by preserving natural lands and significant habitats, lands suitable for the production of food, timber, or other cultivated or natural products, lands creating scenic vistas for public enjoyment, lands with…
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
The mission of cleveland leadership center (the organization) is to build a continuum of civic leaders committed to our community's excellence by serving as a catalyst for civic engagement. the organization achieves its mission by…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Great Lakes Biomimicry 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 47 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 13% 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.
70 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. 70 of the 142 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 WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Inc ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds Midcoast Conservancy ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY CIRCLE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE NATURE AND SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds URBAN COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FOOTPATH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAND STUDIO INC ↗
- Who funds BIRTHING BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds THE HOLDEN ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds RID-ALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds VERMONT PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds SMOKEY HOUSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds BENNINGTON MUSEUM 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 Cleveland Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · Third Federal Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · Murphy Family Foundation · Emma R Fox Char Trust Mut Fds · Saint Lukes Foundation of Cleveland Ohio · The Cleveland Clinic Foundation Group Return · The Abington 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 Sears Swetland 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.
- Smokey House Center — 54% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc — 42% of income from government
- Family Promise Inc — 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
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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.