· Private foundation
The Wendys 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 $10k18 grants · $78k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $60k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $175k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption | $175,000 |
| MidOhio Food Collective | $25,000 |
| Columbus Urban League Empowerment | $15,000 |
| Columbus Urban League HerStory | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Northern Illinois Foodbank | $7,500 |
| ForKids Inc | $5,000 |
| Kaleidoscope Youth Center | $5,000 |
| Shepherds Corner Ecology Center | $5,000 |
| MY Project USA | $5,000 |
| Kids Mental Health Foundation | $5,000 |
| Central Community House | $5,000 |
| Proyecto Mariposas | $5,000 |
| Harvest to Hope | $5,000 |
| Star House Foundation | $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 (FY20–25, $335k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 88% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 11% of The Wendys 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, 78% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 69% — 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 +31% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 13 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $78k 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
- DTDAVE THOMAS FOUNDATION FOR ADOPTION5× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +118%
- CUCOLUMBUS URBAN LEAGUE5× · 2020–2024 · $300k · revenue +83%
- YWYOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION3× · 2020–2024 · $175k · revenue +78%
Funded once
- WWWendys We Care Fundone grant, 2020 · $200k
- TDThe Dave Thomas Foundation for Adopone grant, 2021 · $175k
- WWeCareone grant, 2024 · $56k
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 strengthen youth and families while enhancing systems and communities.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
We are the premier childrens mental health agency that reduces the suffering experienced by children who have emotional problems related to depression, anxiety, and behavior like adhd. untreated, these problems can lead to failure in…
The mission of cornerhouse is to partner with families, communities, and systems - entrusted with the safety of children, youth and vulnerable adults - to reduce trauma and end abuse.
Columbus house serves people experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk by providing life-saving outreach, shelter, and housing and by fostering their personal growth and independence. we advocate for and create affordable housing to…
The food bank for central & northeast missouri is a regional disaster and hunger relief network that acquires and distributes millions of meals each year to help neighbors get the food they need to thrive. (continued on schedule o)the…
Our mission is to solve hunger in central pennsylvania by ensuring that everyone struggling with hunger has access to enough wholesome food every day. we will achieve this bold goal with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and…
With love and respect, we partner with opportunity youth to build the skillsets and mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, livelihood, and leadership. youthbuild strives to create a world where all young people are seen for their…
The mission of the colorado coalition for the homeless is to work collaboratively toward the prevention of homelessness and the creation of lasting solutions for families, children, and individuals who are experiencing or at-risk of…
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
Compass family services helps homeless families and those at imminent risk to achieve housing stability, economic self-sufficiency, and well-being.
To create a better world by serving people in need by operating food pantries, homeless shelters, a domestic violence shelter, affordable housing communities, senior living, assisted living and skilled care facilities, a home health care…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Zebra Youth Inc and the most unlike its peers is Proyecto Mariposas. 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 34 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 — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
84 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. 84 of the 115 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 DAVE THOMAS FOUNDATION FOR ADOPTION ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Mid-Ohio Foodbank ↗
- Who funds CASA VALENTINA INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds MY PROJECT USA ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL COMMUNITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds RAISE THE FUTURE ↗
- Who funds STAR HOUSE ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI FAMILIES FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds HEALTH IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HUNGER ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds DREAMS ON HORSEBACK ↗
- Who funds WELCOME WAREHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds ALVIS INC ↗
- Who funds ROC SOLID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT WOMAN OF SPRINGFIELD & CLARK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Kaleidoscope Youth Center Inc ↗
- Who funds PROYECTO MARIPOSAS ↗
- Who funds CATERINAS CLUB ↗
- Who funds HONOR FLIGHT COLUMBUS INC ↗
- Who funds FOSTER SOURCE ↗
- Who funds COMMON GROUND FREE STORE ↗
- Who funds TREE HOUSE ENT CULTURAL ARTS MOVEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds THE WYMAN CENTER ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
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: Columbus Foundation · Harry C Moores Foundation · Ingram-White Castle Foundation · Cardinal Health Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · United Way of Central Ohio Inc · Encova Foundation of Ohio · Nisource Charitable Foundation · Safelite Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Women's Fund of Central Ohio · L Brands 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 Wendys 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 Children's Home Society of Florida — 6% of income from government
- Connecticut Foodshare Inc — 5% of income from government
- Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida Inc — 2% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 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 Wendys Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Wendys 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.