· Private foundation
Bentley Fund
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLUMBIA GREENE HUMANE SOCIETY | $6,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,300 |
| NO FARM VT | $3,300 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,200 |
| MILLBROOK SCHOOL | $2,400 |
| INDIAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL | $2,400 |
| OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE | $2,261 |
| PROMISE WORLD WIDE | $2,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,200 |
| PEAR YOUTH MENTORING | $2,200 |
| ROXBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY | $2,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,200 |
| COLUMBIA HIGH SCHOOL | $2,100 |
| DCC FOUNDATION AER | $2,100 |
| GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW SCHOOL | $2,068 |
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 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 56% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +30% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
57 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 38 since wound down; 22 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- MSMILLBROOK SCHOOL9× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +46%
- IMINDIAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL INC9× · 2017–2025 · $22k · revenue +118%
- OCOCCIDENTAL COLLEGE9× · 2017–2025 · $21k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- MKMONTCLAIR KIMBERLEY ACADEMY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +17%
- JSJEFFERSON SCHOOL PTAone grant, 2017 · $3k
- TLTEATOWN LAKE RESERVATION INCone grant, 2024 · $2k · revenue -40%
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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
See schedule o.founded in 1866, carleton college is a private, coeducational liberal arts college of 2,007 students located in the historic river town of northfield, minnesota. nationally recognized as the nation's top college for…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
to provide a rigorous and transformative liberal arts education that prepares students to become thoughtful, engaged citizens.
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.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connecticut College and the most unlike its peers is Evergreen Cemetery 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 69 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) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 6% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 93 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 MILLBROOK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds INDIAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SUFFIELD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds ALFRED UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds REED INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds HOLDERNESS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE COLGATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AFS-USA INC ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN CEMETERY INC ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Mellon University ↗
- Who funds COLUMBIA-GREENE HUMANE SOCIETY 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: The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Verizon Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving 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 Bentley Fund 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.
- Outright Vermont — 13% of income from government
- Shelburne Museum Inc — 9% of income from government
- Shelburne Farms — 3% of income from government
- Trustees of Clark University — 2% of income from government
- Reed Institute — 1% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Bennington College Corporation — 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 Bentley Fund?
Find your warmest path to Bentley Fund 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.