· Private foundation
W W Smith Charitable Trust
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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k166 grants · $4.6M
- $50k–250k81 grants · $7.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEMPLE UNIVERSITY-OF THE COMMONWEALTH SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUC | $223,000 |
| DREXEL UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $163,000 |
| ROWAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC | $155,000 |
| SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY | $141,000 |
| VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY | $138,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH | $125,000 |
| DREXEL UNIVERSITY | $125,000 |
| THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY | $125,000 |
| THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA | $125,000 |
| WISTAR INSTITUTE OF ANATOMY & BIOLOGY | $125,000 |
| LANKENAU INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH | $125,000 |
| DREXEL UNIVERSITY | $125,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $125,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $125,000 |
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 (FY25–25, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 49% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +17% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
172 repeat relationships — 142 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 56 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- DUDREXEL UNIVERSITY4× · 2021–2025 · $2.2M · revenue +18%
- TUTemple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education4× · 2021–2025 · $1.4M · revenue +17%
- TJTHOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY4× · 2021–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +15%
Funded once
- WCWest Chester University Foundationone grant, 2023 · $162k
- LILankenau Institute for Medical Researchone grant, 2022 · $125k
- TMTHE MILTON S HERSHEY MEDICAL CENTERone grant, 2022 · $120k · revenue +16%
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.
Catholic charities serves to not only meet the immediate needs of the vulnerable within our communities but to provide solutions that embrace a path to stability for those we are privileged to serve. catholic charities is the primary…
Driving change from the ground up, the urban affairs coalition (uac) unites government, business, neighborhoods, and individual initiatives to improve the quality of life in the region, build wealth in urban communities, and solve emerging…
Chs empowers individuals and families to live in stable housing, connect to community resources, build relationships and access quality food.
None
We, pittsburgh mercy health system and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. mercy life center is a member of pittsburgh mercy health system…
Public health management corporation (phmc) is a nonprofit public health institute that creates and sustains healthier communities. phmc uses best practices to improve community health through direct service, partnership, innovation,…
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…
Chartiers believes each individual, regardless of economic status, has a right to achieve his/her highest potential and become a self-sufficient and full participating member of the community.
Catholic charities, diocese of allentown serves as a living expression of christ's love by providing compassionate, professional services, advocacy, and hope to individuals, families, and communities, regardless of faith while respecting…
Skilled nursing facility.
See schedule o.power's mission is to help women reclaim their lives from addiction and related emotional health issues and improve the well-being of future generations. we provide a range of gender-responsive, trauma-informed drug and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Episcopal Community Services of the Diocese of Pennsylvania and the most unlike its peers is NORTH10 Philadelphia. 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 39 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
271 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. 271 of the 291 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 DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education ↗
- Who funds THE WISTAR INSTITUTE OF ANATOMY AND BIOLOGY ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ROWAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WIDENER UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LANKENAU INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds URSINUS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LA SALLE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE SCIENCES IN PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds ARCADIA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds The Institute For Cancer Research ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GWYNEDD MERCY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE VALLEY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NEUMANN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BRYN MAWR COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CHESTNUT HILL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MOORE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ↗
- Who funds EASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WILLIAMSON COLLEGE OF THE TRADES ↗
- Who funds IMMACULATA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HARCUM COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAIRN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds PEIRCE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ROSEMONT COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CHILD JESUS ↗
- Who funds CABRINI LEGACY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Independence Seaport Museum ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS ↗
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: The Philadelphia Foundation · The Leo and Peggy Pierce Family Foundation Inc · The Gordon Charter Foundation · Connelly Foundation · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · Wsfs Cares Foundation · Lindback Cr & Mf Foundation Tw Main · Genuardi Family Foundation · Philabundance · The William Penn Foundation · Beatty Helen D Groome Uw
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 W W Smith Charitable Trust 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.
- Center for Family Services — 73% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Neighborhood Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rowan University Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rutgers University Foundation — 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 W W Smith Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to W W Smith Charitable Trust 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.