· Private foundation
William J & Bonnie L Hefner Foundation Inc
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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 73% of WILLIAM J & BONNIE L HEFNER FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $42k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $120k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $588k
- $250k+5 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HISTORIC FORT WAYNE | $500,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $400,000 |
| CHARIS HOUSE | $325,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $300,000 |
| COMMUNITY HARVEST FOOD BANK | $250,000 |
| FORT WAYNE RESCUE MISSION | $200,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF FORT WAYNE | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $62,900 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $50,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $50,000 |
| YMCA OF DEKALB COUNTY | $50,000 |
| DAVE HEFNER INTERNATIONAL STUDENT E | $25,000 |
| LITTLE RIVER WETLANDS | $25,000 |
| DICKS ORGANICS | $25,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $43k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
29 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 12 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, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
- HFHISTORIC FORT WAYNE INC3× · 2018–2024 · $538k · revenue +531% · 87% of their budget
- CHCOMMUNITY HARVEST FOOD BANK OF NORTHEAST INDIANA INC7× · 2018–2024 · $365k · revenue +21%
- FWFORT WAYNE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC5× · 2018–2022 · $252k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- RMRESCUE MISSIONone grant, 2023 · $400k
- FRFW RESCUE MISSIONone grant, 2022 · $150k
- FWFORT WAYNE COMMUNITY SCHOOLSone grant, 2019 · $120k
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.
To provide compassionate, patient-centered care for mind and body that improves the quality of life for our communities.
The fort wayne museum of art will collect, preserve and present american and related art to engage and educate broad and diverse audiences throughout the region and add value to their lives.
Improving the health status of the community at large with special emphasis on those who, because of their poverty, location in rural areas, or for other reasons, have health needs which are not being properly addressed.
Indiana united way is the leading voice to advocate, engage, and partner with a strong united way network and key stakeholders to advance human well-being throughout indiana.
Pbs fort wayne engages our community through content and collaborations that educate, inform, inspire, and entertain.
Ann arbor hands-on museum creates moments of discovery that inspire curiosity, exploration and respect for stem and the natural world. together with the leslie science & nature center, we envision a world where curiosity today leads to…
Mission is to provide necessary resources to persons with disabilities in order to assist them in enhancing their daily lives. we provide pre-vocational training, habilitation services, individual support, and employment services based on…
Provide early child development to disadvantaged children
We exist to serve our patients with compassionate health care of the highest quality.
Providing innovative and life-enriching services for children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities.
Our mission is to inspire curiosity and empower individuals to explore and experiment with science in all its forms. we embrace a "do science" philosophy: play, tinker, collaborate, test, experiment, learn from mistakes, and try again.…
Provide services in response to individual need
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Turnstone Center for Children & Adults With Disabilities Inc and the most unlike its peers is Science Central Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 38 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
18 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. 18 of the 62 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 HISTORIC FORT WAYNE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HARVEST FOOD BANK OF NORTHEAST INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds FORT WAYNE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Super Shot Inc ↗
- Who funds FORT WAYNE RESCUE MISSION MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY WAYNE AREA COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE RIVER WETLANDS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF SOUTH CENTRAL INDIANA ↗
- Who funds MATTHEW 25 INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD BASEBALL ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIALTY TUTORING INC ↗
- Who funds KATE'S KART INC ↗
- Who funds HAROLD W MCMILLEN CENTER FOR HEALTH EDUCATION 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 Waterfield Foundation Inc · M E Raker Foundation Inc · English-Bonter-Mitchell Fdn · Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne Inc · McMillen Foundation Inc · Edward M Wilson Foundation · Zollner Foundation · Howard P Arnold Foundation Inc · Surack Family Foundation Inc · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Edward D & Ione Auer Foundation Monarch Capital David Meyer Trustee · Journal Gazette Foundation Inc
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 William J & Bonnie L Hefner Foundation Inc 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.
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How do I get to William J & Bonnie L Hefner Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to William J & Bonnie L Hefner Foundation Inc 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.