· Private foundation
Aequa 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Aequa Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Boston Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOSTON FOUNDATION INC | $317,820 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of your 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 +46% since the first grant, against -95% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2021, 8 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- FAFOLK ARTS CENTER OF NEW ENGLAND INC3× · 2017–2020 · $17k · revenue +8%
- TSTHE STONE TRUST INC2× · 2017–2018 · $17k · revenue +234%
- BEBOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL INC2× · 2017–2018 · $11k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- AFASSN FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN PREHISTORY INCone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue -95% · 99% of their budget
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.
Teach and promote English and American folk dance and music in the California Bay Area. Hold public dances, workshops, and dance camps with intensive instruction. Affilated nationally with CDSS.
Organize conference for folk musicians
The mission of the Bowdoin International Music Festival is to provide gifted young musicians from around the world with an opportunity to study with world-class artists, and to provide audiences with classical music performed to the…
Advance the performance, study, appreciation, and enjoyment of chamber music through a program of public concerts, education, seminars, and lecture
The heart of Boston Ballet is the human experience. Through our living and breathing art, we forge human connections-between artist and attendee, teacher and trainee, friend and newcomer, one's outer and inner self. Dance history is human…
Alaska residents benefit from free public admission to an arts and culture festival; the week-long festival encourages non-professional musicians and performers, and has been operating since 1975.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boston Early Music Festival Inc and the most unlike its peers is Assn for the Study of Language in Prehistory Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 12 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 Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds FOLK ARTS CENTER OF NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds THE STONE TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds PINEWOODS CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds New England Folk Festival Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds ASSN FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN PREHISTORY 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Aequa 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Boston Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Aequa Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Aequa 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.