· Private foundation
Tony R Wells 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Down Syndrome Affiliates in Action | $2,488 |
| Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio | $1,272 |
| Down Syndrome Guild of Dallas | $1,010 |
| Pedal the Cause | $632 |
| National MS Society | $330 |
| Young's Jersey Dairy Bike Ride | $294 |
| YMCA | $250 |
| Flying Horse Farms | $208 |
| Individual grant recipient | $207 |
| NAMI | $105 |
| KIWANIS CLUB OF COLS | $100 |
| Pedal with Pete | $88 |
| Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio | $77 |
| Joshua Chamberlain Society | $77 |
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, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 20% 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.
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 8% of Tony R Wells 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, 64% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 57% — 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 +28% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 27 since wound down; 6 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- DSDOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO6× · 2018–2024 · $9k · revenue +517%
- PTPEDAL THE CAUSE7× · 2018–2024 · $3k · revenue +53%
- BBBREAKTHROUGH BIKE CHALLENGE2× · 2021–2022 · $1k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- FCFRANKLINTON CYCLEWORKSone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +8%
- BRBuckeye Region Anti-Violenceone grant, 2023 · $6k
- DSDown Syndrom Affiliates in Actionone grant, 2023 · $5k
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.
A parent support organization dedicated to promoting the rights, dignity and potential of all individuals with down syndrome through advocacy, education, public awareness and support.
To insure that individuals born with down syndrome are born into an undertanding and inclusive community where there abilities and potential are recognized and they thrive in the life of their choosing
To be a resource and advocacy organization promoting public awareness and supporting lifelong opportunities for individuals with down syndrome and their families.
The organizations mission is to enhance the quality of life throughout the life span of all individuals with down syndrome by providing support, information and education to families, professionals and communities.
1) Promote lifelong health and improve quality of life for people with DS; 2) Help caregivers navigate the whole journey of raising and caring for a person with Down syndrome from before birth throughout the aging process; 3) help grow…
Dsaoc's mission is to create a place for connection, information and hope for people with down syndrome and their families throughout greater orange county, to promote down syndrome awareness through community outreach, and to offer…
The organization is a subsidiary organization of down syndrome association of wisconsin inc., a 501(c)(3). the mission at the down syndrome association of wisconsin (dsaw) is to provide support to wisconsin families and individuals with…
To connect support and provide accurate information to families with a down syndrome diagnosis
The National Down Syndrome Society empowers individuals with Down syndrome and their families by driving policy change, providing resources, engaging with local communities, and shifting public perceptions.
Down syndrome alliance of the midlands is committed to connecting those touched by down syndrome through education, advocacy and support.
The foundation is organized to provide permanent support through fundraising activities and investment earnings to the down syndrome association of west michigan.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Down Syndrome Affiliates in Action and the most unlike its peers is Safelite Foundation. 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 21 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
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 119 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 GROUNDWORK GROUP ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME AFFILIATES IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds FRANKLINTON CYCLEWORKS ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds Otterbein University ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds PEDAL THE CAUSE ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH BIKE CHALLENGE ↗
- Who funds Down Syndrome Guild of Dallas ↗
- Who funds DRIVEN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAFELITE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIALVENTURES ↗
- Who funds TECH CORPS OHIO ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME ASSN OF CENTRAL TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota ↗
- Who funds STRATFORD ECOLOGICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds A KID AGAIN INC ↗
- Who funds My Special Word ↗
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 · United Way of Central Ohio Inc · Global Down Syndrome Foundation · Harry C Moores Foundation · Ingram-White Castle Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · Delaware County Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · Cardinal Health Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Nisource Charitable Foundation · Carmax 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 Tony R Wells 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 Tony R Wells Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Tony R Wells 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.