· Private foundation
Arthur M and Martha R Pappas Foundation
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: 61% of ARTHUR M AND MARTHA R PAPPAS FOUNDATION’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 $10k6 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $81k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $545k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TOWN OF AUBURN | $250,000 |
| ECOTARIUM | $200,000 |
| UMASS MEMORIAL HEALTH | $200,000 |
| TOWER HILL BOTANIC GARDEN | $75,000 |
| THE HANOVER THEATRE | $70,000 |
| AUBURN YOUTH & FAMILY SER | $25,000 |
| WELLESLEY COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| ARTS WORCESTER | $20,000 |
| MASS AUDUBON SOCIETY | $11,000 |
| THE WONDER MISSION | $5,000 |
| HOPE FOR WORCESTER | $5,000 |
| CTR FOR FAMILY CONNECTION | $5,000 |
| WORCESTER RISE FOR HEALTH | $5,000 |
| FIRST CHURCH OF JAFFREY | $2,000 |
| FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF AUBU | $2,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +66% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 41 since wound down; 5 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $235k 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
- MWMUSIC WORCESTER INC6× · 2017–2023 · $1.3M · revenue +66%
- FPFranklin Pierce University2× · 2021–2022 · $500k · revenue +39%
- WNWORCESTER NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY INC3× · 2017–2024 · $349k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- UCUMASS CHAN MEDICAL SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $250k
- UMU MASSDCOE GIFT ACCTone grant, 2021 · $250k
- AOAMERICAN ORTHOPAEDIC ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2019 · $75k · revenue -4%
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.
Worcester historical museum is a unique organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, and interpreting worcester's history in all time periods and subject areas.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
New england botanic garden at tower hill creates experiences with plants that inspire people and improve the world.
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
Wpi transforms lives, turns knowledge into action to confront global challenges, and revolutionizes stem through distinctive and inclusive education, projects and research. (http://www.wpi.edu/about/mission.html)
To provide an organization devoted exclusively to the prosecution of historic preservation, antiquarian, educational, historical, literary, artisitic and monumental purposes, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of…
The greater worcester land trust promotes the protection, stewardship and appreciation of open space to enhance the quality of life and functioning of natural systems in worcester and the region.
Maine Historical Society, founded in 1822, is a private non-profit whose mission is to preserve and share Maine's story. Based in Portland, we work closely with communities and partners throughout the state, and serve a statewide and…
New england museum association's mission is to connect a community engaged in learning, collaboration, and action to cultivate a better museum world.
The mwm owns and operates the waterworks museum (the "museum"), including a community meeting room. the museum is a single condominium unit of the museum building condominium, one of separate condominium building regimes on the site. the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Old Sturbridge Inc and the most unlike its peers is Icon Museum and Study Center Inc. 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 48 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 77 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 MUSIC WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Franklin Pierce University ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ORTHOPAEDIC ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OLD STURBRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MECHANICS HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ARTSWORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds ABBY KELLEY FOSTER HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVITY SCHOOL OF WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY HEALTH CENTER OF WORCESTERINC ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN COMMUNITY EDUCATION PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds New England Center for Family Connection ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF WORCESTER ↗
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: Wyman Gordon · Stoddard Charitable Trust · Schwartz Charitable Foundation · Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · Ruth H & Warren a Ellsworth Foundation · The Fred Harris Daniels Foundation · The Fletcher Foundation · The George I Alden Trust · Webster Five Foundation Inc · J Irving & Jane L England Charitable Trusta Molloy & F Russellco-Trustees · Fallon Community Health Plan Inc · Rockwell 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 Arthur M and Martha R Pappas 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 Youth Center Inc — 64% of income from government
- Family Health Center of Worcesterinc — 39% of income from government
- Community Harvest Project Inc — 18% of income from government
- Worcester Natural History Society Inc — 8% of income from government
- Friendly House Inc — 8% of income from government
- Music Worcester Inc — 7% of income from government
- American Antiquarian Society — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Regional Environmental Council Inc — 6% of income from government
- Old Sturbridge Inc — 4% of income from government
- Girls Incorporated of Worcester — 2% of income from government
- Artsworcester Inc — 2% of income from government
- Boys and Girls Club of Worcester Inc — 2% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- Worcester Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- New England Center for Family Connection — 1% 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 Arthur M and Martha R Pappas Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Arthur M and Martha R Pappas 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.