· Private foundation
The Topper Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k24 grants · $98k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $214k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $267k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF THE GREATER LV | $960,000 |
| THE SCHOOL SISTERS OF ST FRANCIS | $560,000 |
| PROVINCE OF OUR MOTHER | $325,000 |
| VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY | $142,500 |
| ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGELS | $74,000 |
| TRINITY HALL | $50,000 |
| SCHOOL OF ANGELS | $45,000 |
| LEHIGH VALLEY HOSPITAL | $41,702 |
| REGINA ANGELORUM ACADEMY | $29,000 |
| ASSUMPTION CHURCH | $27,500 |
| STAR COMMUNITY HEALTH | $15,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| SECOND ROUND FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| FRIENDS SCHOOL | $12,000 |
| CAY GALGON LIFE HOUSE | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $99k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 75% 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 +37% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
59 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 36 since wound down; 15 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $966k 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
- VUVILLANOVA UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +50%
- DUDESALES UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2023 · $243k · revenue +37%
- LVLEHIGH VALLEY HEALTH NETWORK4× · 2017–2020 · $211k · revenue +601%
Funded once
- UWUNITED WAY EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2020 · $250k
- TCTHE CATHOLIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $35k
- IOInternational OCD Foundation Incone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +9%
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.
Mercy Health will provide assistance, support and direction to all of the health care institutions and activities operated and maintained by its Subsidiaries. The mission of Mercy Health in performing these activities shall be to provide a…
As the parent entity of a blended health organization, highmark health seeks to improve the health and well-being of the people and communities it serves by providing affordable, accessible and high-quality healthcare.
We heal, comfort and care for the people of our community by providing advanced and compassionate health care of superior quality and value supported by education and clinical research.
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christ's healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
As philadelphia's jesuit catholic university, saint joseph's provides a rigorous, student-centered education rooted in the liberal arts. we prepare students for personal excellence, professional success, and engaged citizenship. striving…
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christs healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To support salem health, salem health west valley and related organizations.
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christ's healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christ's healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christ's healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montefiore Medical Center and the most unlike its peers is Little Sisters of the Poor. 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 43 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) — 2% 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.
61 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. 61 of the 143 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 VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DESALES UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH VALLEY HEALTH NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Trinity Hall ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH VALLEY HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds GOOD SHEPHERD CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GREENS LEDGE LIGHT PRESERVATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds REGINA ANGELORUM ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CAY GALGON LIFE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE LEHIGH GAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ALLENTOWN INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOM FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds NAFASI PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds International OCD Foundation 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: United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley · Lehigh Valley Community Foundation · Air Products Foundation · Ppl Foundation · The Century Fund Trust · The Frank J Ryan and Jane E Ryan Family Foundation · Salvaggio Family Foundation · The Lehigh Gas Foundation · Ross J Born and Wendy G Born Charitable Trust · Harry C Trexler Estate · Frederick H Bedford Jr & Margaret S Bedford Charitable Foundation · Pennsylvania Automotive Association 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 Topper 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.
- The Nemours Foundation — 0% 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 Topper Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Topper 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.