United Way of Lancaster County
Lancaster, PA · EIN 23-1352093. Reported 85 grants totalling $11.4M to 53 organizations across tax years 2020-2023, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. For United Way of Lancaster County, by its IRS classification it raises and distributes funds for arts & culture (NTEE A12).
- How spread out its giving is. 53 distinct organizations, with 35% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
- How much its list changes. 57% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is about the 57% median for grantmaking charities -- noticeably lower than the 67% private foundations manage. Organizations like this one rotate more of their list each year, which is where an opening for a newcomer tends to be.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $30,550. Half of what it reported fell between $18,500 and $55,000; the smallest was $5,000 and the largest $1,704,521. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nurse Family Partnership | Denver, CO | $3,951,543 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Donor Designated Pledges | $2,355,246 | 4 | 4 | 2023 | |
| Lancaster General Health | Lancaster, PA | $1,704,521 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lancaster General Hospital | Lancaster, PA | $500,000 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Lanco Cares Rapid Response Grants (including 25 Grantees Over 5000) | $247,444 | 1 | 1 | 2020 | |
| Uw Emergency Funding (including 4 Grantees Over 5000) | $182,500 | 1 | 1 | 2020 | |
| Lancaster County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities | Lancaster, PA | $162,384 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| United Churches of Elizabethtown | Elizabethtown, PA | $143,896 | 3 | 2 | 2022 |
| Lancaster County Food Hub | Lancaster, PA | $134,172 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Bright Side Opportunities Corporation | Lancaster, PA | $131,500 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Lancaster Emergency Medical Services Association | Lancaster, PA | $116,285 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Pennsylvania Furniture Mission | Columbia, PA | $110,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Arbor Place | Lancaster, PA | $95,000 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Luthercare | Lititz, PA | $94,199 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Parish Resource Center Inc | Lancaster, PA | $90,000 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Union Community Care | Lancaster, PA | $83,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Swan Scaling Walls a Note at a Time | Downingtown, PA | $80,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Lancaster-Lebanon Education Foundation | Lancaster, PA | $70,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Assets Lancaster | Lancaster, PA | $69,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Community Service Group | Mountville, PA | $58,828 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Tenfold | Lancaster, PA | $58,727 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Meals on Wheels | Lancaster, PA | $55,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Milagro House | Lancaster, PA | $55,000 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Common Wheel | Lancaster, PA | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Girls on the Run of Lancaster | Landisville, PA | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Patients R Waiting Inc | Lititz, PA | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Valley Youth House Committee | Bethlehem, PA | $48,100 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Ephrata Area Social Services | Ephrata, PA | $47,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Homefields | Millersville, PA | $46,480 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| The Factory Ministries | Paradise, PA | $40,904 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Elizabethtown Community Housing & Outreach Services | Elizabethtown, PA | $40,500 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lancaster Recreation Commission | Lancaster, PA | $37,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Columbia Presbyterian Church | Columbia, PA | $36,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lancaster Family YMCA | Lancaster, PA | $35,000 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Franklin & Marshall College | Lancaster, PA | $30,550 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| Halfway Environment for Alcoholics Recovering Inc | Lancaster, PA | $30,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Loft Community Partnership | Millersville, PA | $30,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Boys & Girls Club of Lancaster | Lancaster, PA | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Edible Classroom | Columbia, PA | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Lancaster Lgbtq Coalition | Lancaster, PA | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Arch Street Center Inc | Lancaster, PA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| CASA of Lancaster County Inc | Lancaster, PA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| African American Cultural Alliance Inc | Lancaster, PA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lancaster Area Habitat for Humanity Inc | Lancaster, PA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lancaster Moravian Church | Lancaster, PA | $14,850 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Communications Essentials LLC | Bausman, PA | $12,500 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County Inc | Lancaster, PA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Music for Everyone | Lancaster, PA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| YWCA Lancaster | Lancaster, PA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Midpenn Legal Services Inc | Harrisburg, PA | $9,997 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Lancaster Redevelopment Fund | Lancaster, PA | $8,340 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Wellspan Health | York, PA | $7,370 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Spanish American Civic Association for Equality Inc | Lancaster, PA | $6,400 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
24 of 53 (45%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What the money was for
Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.
- Nurse Family Partnership
COUMMUNITY IMPACT GRANT/UNITED WAY MATCH - Lancaster County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities
JOINT FUNDING & ADMIN EFSP - Lancaster County Food Hub
LEVEL UP & LAUNCH & LANC CO MY HOME - Luthercare
SCHOLARSHIPS & LEVEL UP & LAUNCH - Girls on the Run of Lancaster
LEVEL UP & LAUNCH & WOMENS UNITED GRANT - Franklin & Marshall College
COLLECTIVE IMPACT SUPPORT
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 35 of 53 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 7 | $2,525,524 | $247,444 |
| 2021 | 20 | $2,532,272 | $30,000 |
| 2022 | 28 | $3,052,012 | $32,500 |
| 2023 | 30 | $3,244,428 | $30,000 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
54% of its giving went to organizations in Pennsylvania. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $30,550 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Pennsylvania.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Related guides
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from United Way of Lancaster County's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2020-2023). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
Address of record on the latest return: 1910 Harrington Drive a, Lancaster, PA, 17601.
EIN 23-1352093 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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