· Public charity
The Van Wert County Foundation
The mission of THE VAN WERT COUNTY FOUNDATION is to transform quatilty of life by inspiring, fulfilling, and supporting philanthropy in an effort to create a well-resourced and thriving quality of life for our surrounding communities.
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.
The 43 grants below total $1,431,072 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,527,188 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,096,116 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k15 grants · $108k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $511k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $506k
- $250k+1 grant · $306k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VAN WERT AREA PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION | $306,116 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $141,567 |
| VANTAGE CAREER CENTER | $138,279 |
| VAN WERT CITY SCHOOLS | $115,291 |
| WASSENBERG ART CENTER ASSOCIATION | $110,915 |
| NEW HORIZONS COMMUNITY CHURCH | $45,000 |
| CRESTVIEW LOCAL SCHOOLS | $41,620 |
| OHIO HEALTH FOUNDATION | $35,664 |
| VAN WERT COUNTY 4-H | $35,000 |
| CULVER MILITARY ACADEMY | $32,303 |
| YMCA OF VAN WERT COUNTY | $30,656 |
| BRUMBACK LIBRARY | $27,082 |
| MAIN STREET VAN WERT INC | $25,000 |
| WEE CARE LEARNING CENTER | $23,022 |
| LIFEWISE ACADEMY | $21,215 |
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, $255k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 2% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of The Van Wert County Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 97% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 88% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +32% since the first grant, against -10% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 2 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- WAWASSENBERG ART CENTER ASSOCIATION7× · 2017–2024 · $695k · revenue +65% · 49% of their budget
Culver Educational Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $265k · revenue +73%- VWVan Wert County Agricultural Society8× · 2017–2024 · $245k · revenue +72%
Funded once
- VWVAN WERT COUNTY TENNIS ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2020 · $43k
- VWVAN WERT COUNTY COUNCIL ON AGING INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +39%
- MRMERCER RESIDENTIAL SERVICES INCone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -1%
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.
To provide lifetime affordable, safe, and accessible housing for individuals with disabilities who reside in van wert county in the state of ohio.
The mission of The Howland Cultural Center is threefold: 1) To protect and preserve this historic building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and commissioned by his brother-in-law, Civil War General Joseph Howland in 1872, and placed on the…
Family health care (fhc) is dedicated to providing high quality, patient-centered care to all residents of van wert and surrounding counties. fhc offers medical, dental and behavioral health services to patients regardless of a person's…
Various athletic programs at the school
To collaborate with state, regional, local, and private-sector partners to improve the economic well being and quality of life for citizens of van buren and surrounding areas.
To increase the organized capacity of people to care for one another. the united way of van wert county, inc. tries to improve the quality of life throughout van wert county by allocating resources accordingly.
The fire department responds to vehicle accidents, fire emergency calls and other medical emergencies.
Assist in maintaining an adequate uniform fund, lend assistance to the band director, and promote the general interest and welfare of the band
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Van Wert County Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Pregnancy Life Center. 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 33 years old; the field is 23. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 14% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
42 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 42 of the 76 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 VAN WERT AREA PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WASSENBERG ART CENTER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE VAN WERT COUNTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Culver Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds Van Wert County Agricultural Society ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF VAN WERT INC ↗
- Who funds THE LIBRARY ENRICHMENT FOUNDATION OF THE BRUMBACK LIBRARY VAN WERT C ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT COUNTY HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSN OF VAN WERT CO OHIO ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT ROTARY FOUNDATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds Sigma Chi Foundation ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT COUNTY DAY CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT SERVICE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds MAIN STREET VAN WERT INC ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT AREA ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds VAN WERT CIVIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds LIFEWISE INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLNVIEW BIBLE BOARD ↗
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 Van Wert County Inc · Columbus Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Van Wert County 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.