· Private foundation
The Western New York 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 $10k84 grants · $285k
- $10k–50k46 grants · $681k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $254k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES | $100,000 |
| CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION CHAUTUAQUA | $52,500 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE PROJECT | $51,100 |
| CONNECTING COMMUNITIES IN ACTION | $50,000 |
| NY FUNDERS ALLIANCE | $41,797 |
| ROYCROFT CAMPUS CORPORATION | $40,000 |
| PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE | $31,421 |
| PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE | $30,000 |
| INFINITY VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS INC | $30,000 |
| BUFFALO PREP | $26,000 |
| MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATES | $21,400 |
| CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION OF NIAGARA | $21,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,500 |
| GERARD PLACE | $20,000 |
| GOOD FOOD BUFFALO COALITION | $17,335 |
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, $993k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +48% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
128 repeat relationships — 55 still active in FY2025, 73 since wound down; 34 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; $276k 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
PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE CORP5× · 2021–2025 · $192k · revenue +164%- MAMassachusetts Avenue Project Inc6× · 2017–2025 · $181k · revenue +90%
The Rural Outreach Center Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $179k · revenue +261%
Funded once
- BFBUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMYone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue -68%
- FWFEEDMORE WESTERN NEW YORK INCone grant, 2020 · $58k · revenue -4%
- STSOUTHERN TIER WEST DEVELOPMENTone grant, 2021 · $50k
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 promote justice, dignity, and equity for migrants and farmworkers through advocacy, education, outreach, and direct services. We empower our communities to achieve self-sufficiency by fostering collaboration among partners.
The legal aid bureau of buffalo, inc., a not-for-profit organization, provides legal representation to financially needy men, women and children in western new york. through its skilled staff, the legal aid bureau seeks equal justice for…
Invest buffalo niagara foundation, inc. is a vehicle to solicit charitable contributions to develop programs, collaborate with, and provide funding to organizations that advance and encourage economic development in western new york.
The Buffalo Institiute for Contemporary Art (Bica) is a art and educational project for Buffalo, NY. Through Innovative exhibitions, cross-discipplinary skills-based programming, and arts ecology development, bica mission is to break down…
East Buffalo Development Corporation is a community-based real estate development corporation committed to our mission of leveraging private and public funds to drive equitable and inclusive eastside planning, construction, land use, and…
To acquire, remediate, and steward lands along wny's waterfronts prioritizing public access.
CNY Arts' mission is to promote, support, and celebrate arts and culture in Central New York.
Lawny increases access to justice through excellent legal representation, advocacy and service.
RAWNY is dedicated to serving our community by supporting the men and women who have experienced incarceration, and the agencies that serve them, to ensure anyone reentering has access to needed resources and support.
The buffalo erie niagara land improvement corporation (benlic) seeks to confront and alleviate the problems distressed properties cause to communities by supporting municipal and regional revitalization efforts and strategically acquiring,…
The organization was formed for the specific purpose of operating, maintaining and protecting parks and public spaces in the city of buffalo, new york, including but not limited to parks and public spaces owned or operated by the city of…
To improve the quality of life for elderly, disabled and low-income persons in the western new york area through the provision of free civil legal services. the primary goal is to use the legal system to assure that clients may live…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Health Center of Buffalo Inc and the most unlike its peers is Arcade Historical Society. 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 32 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
192 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. 192 of the 325 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BUFFALO AND ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE CORP ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Avenue Project Inc ↗
- Who funds The Rural Outreach Center Inc ↗
- Who funds EXPLORE & MORE A CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WNY WOMEN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO PREP INC ↗
- Who funds JOURNEY'S END REFUGEE SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CHAUTAUQUA STRIDERS INC ↗
- Who funds CRADLE BEACH INC ↗
- Who funds Open Buffalo Inc ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds GERARD PLACE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT FUND COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds INFINITY VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds ARTPARK & COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds ROYCROFT CAMPUS CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds JERICHO ROAD MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds HEART OF THE CITY NEIGHBORHOODS INC ↗
- Who funds Genesee-Orleanse Regional Arts Council ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO STRING WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY HELP CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO GO GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds ROBERT H JACKSON CENTER 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: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · The John R Oishei Foundation · The Peter and Elizabeth C Tower Foundation · Buffalo Bills Foundation Inc · The Frank G Raichle Foundation · The Margaret L Wendt Foundation · Health Foundation for Western & Central New York · The Baird Foundation · United Way of Buffalo and Erie County · First Niagara Foundation · Children's Foundation of Erie County Inc · James H Cummings Foundation Inc
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 Western New York 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Western New York Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Western New York 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.