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Achievement First Inc at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Achievement First Inc

Achievement first, inc.

$3.1M
Granted FY2025still arriving
5
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$1.1M
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Education$52M
02FY2025 · 5 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 5 grants below total $2,813,127, the rows itemized in this filing. The $3,076,582 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $263,455 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $50k–250k1 grant · $179k
  • $250k+4 grants · $2.6M
$525,245
Median grant
1
States reached
$99M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
ACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INC$1,125,603
ELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INC$633,772
ACHIEVEMENT FIRST BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY$525,245
ACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMY$349,919
AMISTAD ACADEMY INC$178,588
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

None of its grants could be placed against low income need for this view.

How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$52M · 6 repeat orgs$0 to everyone else

6 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

6
0

Total granted

$52M
$0

Still filing today

100%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • EC
    ELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INC
    9× · 2017–2025 · $17M · revenue +6% · 33% of their budget
  • AF
    ACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMY
    9× · 2017–2025 · $8.6M · revenue +10%
  • AF
    ACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INC
    9× · 2017–2025 · $8.0M · revenue +467%

Funded once

    How this is measured

    Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

    04Its field
    04the grantee network

    6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

    Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

    How this is measured

    Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover.

    Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

    1
    Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
    0
    Early backer (in before they grew)
    6/6
    Grantees still filing
    6/6
    Grew since first funded

    Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

    ELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INC: $17,279,496 · EducationELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INCACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMY: $8,597,809 · EducationACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMYACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INC: $7,991,674 · EducationACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INCACHIEVEMENT FIRST BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY INC: $7,752,238 · EducationACHIEVEMENT FIRST BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY INCAMISTAD ACADEMY INC: $7,019,521 · EducationAMISTAD ACADEMY INCACHIEVEMENT FIRST BROOKLYN CHARTER SCHOOLS C/O ACHIEVEMENT FIRST INC: $3,757,309 · EducationACHIEVEMENT FIRST BROOKLYN CHARTER SCHOOLS C/O ACHIEVEMENT FIRST INC
    Education$52,398,047

    Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

    25%50%75%100%$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INC: $17,279,496 over 9y, 33% of budgetACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMY: $8,597,809 over 9y, 17% of budgetACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INC: $7,991,674 over 9y, 7.1% of budgetACHIEVEMENT FIRST BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY INC: $7,752,238 over 9y, 10% of budgetAMISTAD ACADEMY INC: $7,019,521 over 9y, 13% of budgetACHIEVEMENT FIRST BROOKLYN CHARTER SCHOOLS C/O ACHIEVEMENT FIRST INC: $3,757,309 over 6y, 1.2% of budget
    Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

    A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

    • Who funds ELM CITY COLLEGE PREPARATORY INC ↗
    • Who funds ACHIEVEMENT FIRST HARTFORD ACADEMY ↗
    • Who funds ACHIEVEMENT FIRST RHODE ISLAND INC ↗
    • Who funds ACHIEVEMENT FIRST BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY INC ↗
    • Who funds AMISTAD ACADEMY INC ↗
    • Who funds ACHIEVEMENT FIRST BROOKLYN CHARTER SCHOOLS C/O ACHIEVEMENT FIRST INC ↗

    How much its grantees rely on government

    Each dot is one organization Achievement First Inc funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Achievement First Inc. Bigger dots raise more.

    2025
    ’20’21’22’23’24’25
    no gov · 00%1%5%11%20%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
      no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
      0get no government money at all
      6report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
      0rely on government for over half their income
      ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
      typical government reliance, FY20–25
      How this is measured
      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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

      On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 6 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

      How this is measured
      Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

      Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

      Source object · view filing

      Play a game based on Achievement First’s filings →

      More from the funding graph

      The unnamed billions
      grants reported with no recipient in the public record
      The regranting layer
      51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
      The DAF merry-go-round
      $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
      The endowment market
      who holds foundation money, and what just moved
      The camps
      funders cluster by geography, not ideology
      By state
      where grant money is based, and what stays home