· Private foundation
WC and EJ Thornton Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $177k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bold | $50,000 |
| Alexander Hamilton Scholars | $44,160 |
| Maine College of Art and Design | $35,000 |
| Portland Maine Symphony Orchestra | $25,000 |
| Forward Steps | $20,000 |
| Downtown Aurora Visual Arts | $20,000 |
| Local Theater Company | $12,500 |
| FORA | $10,000 |
| Colorado Photographic Arts Center | $10,000 |
| College Now Greater Cleveland | $7,500 |
| Art from Ashes | $7,500 |
| Cleveland Classical Guitar Society | $7,500 |
| Education Through Music Colorado | $6,000 |
| Leap of Joy | $5,000 |
| transformative justice project of c | $2,500 |
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 (FY21–25, $28k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 36% 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.
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.
34 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- MCMAINE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN4× · 2022–2025 · $95k · revenue +32%
- FSForward Steps Foundation5× · 2021–2025 · $63k · revenue +65%
- PMPORTLAND MAINE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA4× · 2022–2025 · $60k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- SAScholarship Americaone grant, 2022 · $5k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $3k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $3k
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.
art education
The mission of the cleveland museum of art (cma) is to fulfill its dual roles as one of the world's most distinguished comprehensive art museums and as one of northeastern ohio's principal civic and cultural institutions. the museum,…
The delaware contemporary is a dynamic gathering place for the exploration of new ideas at the intersection of art, design, and technology. the delaware contemporary's compelling exhibitions, innovative educational experiences, and access…
Engaging community at the intersection of art, history and education through innovative, locally connected and globally relevant exhibits, programs and experiences.
Moore is dedicated to excellence in art and design. Founded in 1848, Moore is the first and only visual arts college for women in the US. With its undergraduate BFA degree for women and coeducational graduate programs, Moore cultivates…
Teen art salon provides young people open-door, free-of-charge art instruction and materials to establish and advance individual studio practices.
Color Me Empowered provides programming that empowers children and communities through the implementation of civic art.
Cal champions creative learning, drives educational innovation, and transforms lives through collaborative efforts involving teaching artists, students, educators, and communities.
We envision a community where contemporary artists and an engaged public enhance their creative capacity through relevant, diverse, and accessible experiences.
Life pieces to masterpieces (lptm) is dedicated to the creative, academic, social-emotional, physical, and citizenship development of black boys and young men living in washington d.c.'s underserved 7th and 8th wards. founded in 1996, lptm…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Youth On Record and the most unlike its peers is Museum of Outdoor Arts. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 73 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 ALEXANDER HAMILTON SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds MAINE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN AURORA VISUAL ARTS ↗
- Who funds Forward Steps Foundation ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND MAINE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY OF URBAN LEARNING ↗
- Who funds LOCAL THEATER COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND CLASSICAL GUITAR SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds ART FROM ASHES INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LEAP OF JOY ↗
- Who funds MERRICK HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE COASTAL CHILDRENS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MAINE BLUE COLLAR SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds National Center for Childrens Illustrated Literat ↗
- Who funds 240 STRINGS ↗
- Who funds SUMMIT ARTSPACE ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF OUTDOOR ARTS ↗
- Who funds Colorado Juvenile Defender Center DBA Transformative Justice Proj of Colo ↗
- Who funds TREKKERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MAYFLY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WESTERN MAINE PLAY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Highland Youth Garden Inc ↗
- Who funds Talespinner Childrens Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER COLUMBUS COMMUNITY HELPING HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S AIR & SPACE MUSEUM 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: The Denver Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Redline · Davis Family Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · Bonfils-Stanton Foundation · Onion Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust · Horizon Foundation Inc · Caring for Denver 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 WC and EJ Thornton 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 WC and EJ Thornton Foundation?
Find your warmest path to WC and EJ Thornton 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.