· Private foundation
Alice Rowan Swanson 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC | $15,000 |
| MIDDLE EAST CHILDRENS ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN NEAR EAST REFUGEE AID INC | $10,000 |
| UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF | $10,000 |
| OXFAM-AMERICA INC | $10,000 |
| THE LILIES FOUNDATION | $8,000 |
| AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF OROKO VILLAGE | $5,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC | $5,000 |
| ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS USA INC | $5,000 |
| NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND INC | $5,000 |
| JOY OF MUSIC PROGRAM INC | $5,000 |
| WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE | $2,500 |
| MUSIC WORCESTER INC | $2,500 |
| SEEDS OF PEACE INC | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 90% 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.
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.
30 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF8× · 2018–2025 · $85k · revenue +47%
AMERICAN NEAR EAST REFUGEE AID8× · 2018–2025 · $80k · revenue +153%- MEMIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE8× · 2018–2025 · $55k · revenue +687%
Funded once
- OBOUTWARD BOUND INTERNATIONAL INCone grant, 2022 · $2k
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.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.
Organization mission the observer research foundation america orf america is an independent, non-partisan, and nonprofit organization in washington dc dedicated to addressing policy challenges facing the united states, india, and their…
(msh) saves lives and improves the health of the world's poorest (see schedule o) and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
To advance human rights and social justice in the americas.
The middle east media research institute (memri) explores the middle east through its media, providing timely translations from arabic, farsi, urdu, pashtu, and turkish media and publishing original analysis of political, ideological,…
Education and Research
Our mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medecins Sans Frontieres Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sister Communities of San Ramon Nicaragua. 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 37 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 31 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 UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN NEAR EAST REFUGEE AID ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds JOY OF MUSIC PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds The Lilies Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS-USAINC ↗
- Who funds Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds THE VIRGINIA THURSTON HEALING GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds METAVIVOR RESEARCH AND SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BIKES NOT BOMBS INC ↗
- Who funds Washington Area Bicyclist Association ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds Unitarian Universalist Massachusetts Action Network Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR NONVIOLENT SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds SISTER COMMUNITIES OF SAN RAMON NICARAGUA ↗
- Who funds POLUS CENTER FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY 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: Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Alice Rowan Swanson 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.
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 8% of income from government
- Music Worcester Inc — 7% of income from government
- Bikes Not Bombs Inc — 2% of income from government
- Joy of Music Program Inc — 1% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.