· Private foundation
Thomas R Gross 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 $10k4 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLUMBUS CLASSICAL ACADEMY | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| VISTA VILLAGE | $15,000 |
| COLUMBUS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $10,000 |
| PELOTONIA | $8,500 |
| COLUMBUS ASSOC FOR PERFORMING ARTS | $5,000 |
| HEINZERLING FOUNDATION | $3,500 |
| FRANKLIN PARK CONSERVATORY | $2,206 |
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, $110k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- CCCOLUMBUS CLASSICAL ACADEMY4× · 2022–2025 · $380k · revenue +6%
- CSCOLUMBUS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA8× · 2017–2025 · $70k · revenue +85%
- PPELOTONIA6× · 2017–2025 · $36k · revenue +217%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
- TCTHE COLUMBUS ACADEMYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +48%
- SOSERVING OUR NEIGHBORS MINISTRIES INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +206%
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.
Advancing a thriving central ohio commmunity by serving as a catalyst for all businesses to grow and flourish. our mission pillars are connections, government relations, strategic business solutions and talent/workforce.
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious.
The mission of the cincinnati observatory is to maintain the integrity and heritage of an historic 19th century observatory and to educate, engage, and inspire our community about astronomy and science.
Empowering people. saving wildlife.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
The columbus association of realtors is a local level, not-for-profit trade association. founded in 1908, columbus association of realtors is comprised of more than 9,100 real estate professionals engaged in residential sales and leasing,…
The community education coalition (cec) is a partnership of education, business, and community stakeholders focused on aligning and integrating our community learning system, economic development, and quality of life.
Mission: to champion and elevate the arts and cultural expression of greater columbus.vision: power of art realized. people engaged. city energized.
Cots is a group of physicians, healthcare professionals, and other experts working together to improve the health and safety of our communities.
The ohio state bar association (the "association") is an unincorporated voluntary non-profit organization. the association was formed to promote justice and advance the interests of the legal profession.
Columbus early learning centers (celc) has over 130 years of history providing high quality, affordable early learning and childcare in central ohio. this rich history places celc amongst the oldest early childcare programs in the country.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Stephen Community Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Tylers Light Inc. 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 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 49% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 48 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 COLUMBUS CLASSICAL ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds REEB AVENUE CENTER ↗
- Who funds PELOTONIA ↗
- Who funds HEINZERLING COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS ASSOCIATION FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds VISTA VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds THE BUCKEYE RANCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SHELTER BOARD ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMBUS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Mid-Ohio Foodbank ↗
- Who funds SERVING OUR NEIGHBORS MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds SOAP PROJECT SAVE OUR ADOLESCENTS FROM PROSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds MELISSA'S HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE HARMON MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN THEATRE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TYLERS LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Topiary Park Inc ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds MOUND CITY LITTLE LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY DBA COSI COLUMBUS ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS FOR SELF-GOVERNANCE ↗
- Who funds LIFEWISE 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: Columbus Foundation · Harry C Moores Foundation · L Brands Foundation · United Way of Central Ohio Inc · Encova Foundation of Ohio · Ingram-White Castle Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · Cardinal Health Foundation · Columbus Jewish Foundation · Siemer Family Foundation · Nisource Charitable Foundation · Meuse Family 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 Thomas R Gross 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.
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 Thomas R Gross Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Thomas R Gross Family 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.