· Private foundation
Ward Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OPERATION OUR TOWN | $5,000 |
| ALTOONA SYMPHONY SOCIETY | $3,500 |
| GARVEY MANOR NURSING HOME | $3,000 |
| INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| ARTS ALTOONA | $3,000 |
| URBAN IMPACT FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| BLAIR COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $2,500 |
| CENTRAL PA AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| CAMP ANDERSON CORPORATION | $1,000 |
| BLAIR COUNTY ARTS FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| HOME NURSING AGENCY FOUNDATION | $500 |
| LAKEMONT VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY | $500 |
| ST JUDE CHILDRENS RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $500 |
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 (FY20–24, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +37% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 14 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- UIURBAN IMPACT FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $16k · revenue +137%
- GMGARVEY MANOR NURSING HOME5× · 2020–2024 · $15k · revenue +37%
- OOOPERATION OUR TOWN INC5× · 2020–2024 · $12k · revenue +84%
Funded once
- COCATHEDRAL OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENTone grant, 2020 · $4k
- ACAMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INCone grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue -79%
- ARAMERICAN RESCUE WORKERS INCone grant, 2022 · $1k
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.
The corps provides ambulance and rescue services for blairstown township and surrounding communities.
To operate a not-for-profit museum exhibiting & showcasing the railroad culture of altoona, blair county, pennsylvania, and surrounding area.
Firefighting and emergency medical services
Community ambulance service
The lorain county historical society collects, preserves, and shares the history of lorain county, ohio to educate and inspire present and future generations.
To ensure blair county is the best and most competitive community it can be so we can attract and retain talent, investment, and job opportunities for future generations to come.
Affilia home health is a community service organization in pennsylvania that provides comprehensive home health care to people of all ages in lancaster, berks, chester, schuylkill and dauphin counties and their surrounding area, regardless…
Acquire and preserve property and information of historic value and/or interest concerning delaware county, pennsylvania. the society also operates a research library and museum.
To provide high quality basic and advanced life support pre-hospital care to the community we serve.
Blacklick valley foundation ambulance service is a medical transport service company providing local medical emergency transportation to individuals in the nanty glo, pennsylvania area and out of the area non- emergency transportation.
Scouting activities
Provision of ambulance service and emergency first aid care
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Independent Catholic Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Griffith Family 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 33 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 5% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 63 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 URBAN IMPACT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GARVEY MANOR NURSING HOME ↗
- Who funds WE CARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION OUR TOWN INC ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMP ANDERSON CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BLAIR COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BLAIR COUNTY ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds ALTOONA SYMPHONY SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ALLEGHENIES MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds LAKEMONT VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds GRIFFITH FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL AMBUCS INC ALTOONA CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds BLAIR COUNTY DRUG & ALCOHOL PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds JOSHUA HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN HERITAGE COUNCIL OF BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CONTACT ALTOONA ↗
- Who funds GIRLS NIGHT OUT ALTOONA INC ↗
- Who funds ALTOONA AREA PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds FOR THE KIDS ORG ↗
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 Bruno & Lena Degol Family Found · Central Pennsylvania Community Foundation · Snyder H C & M a Tw Char Trust · Pennsylvania Automotive Association Foundation · Upmc Group · Albemarle Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Johnstown · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Ward 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 Ward Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ward 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.