· Private foundation
Biddeford and Mechanics Savings Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 41% of Biddeford and Mechanics Savings Charitable 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k24 grants · $97k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| United Way of Southern Maine | $25,000 |
| Trinity Jubilee Center | $15,000 |
| Tedford Housing | $10,000 |
| My Place Teen Center | $10,000 |
| Presumpscot Regional Land Trust | $10,000 |
| Safe Voices | $8,333 |
| Tree Street Youth | $8,333 |
| Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project | $7,500 |
| University of New England | $5,000 |
| Valo | $5,000 |
| The Locker Project | $5,000 |
| Mainely Character | $5,000 |
| University of Southern Maine Foundation | $5,000 |
| The Drop-In Center | $5,000 |
| Seeds of Hope Neighborhood Center | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $102k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 19% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
31 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 8 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, 77% 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
- MPMy Place Teen Center Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $82k · revenue +208%
- TJTrinity Jubilee Center Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $55k · revenue +739%
- SVSafe Voices5× · 2021–2025 · $50k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- UWUnited Way of York Countyone grant, 2020 · $17k
- EEEcology Education Inc (aka The Ecology School)one grant, 2021 · $10k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $5k
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.
We strive to help individuals and families in Maine meet their basic, material needs by providing donated clothing, hygiene products, household items, and other necessities. We focus our work on those starting life over from scratch:…
It is the mission of Eastern Area Agency on Aging to be the best source of information, options, and services for seniors, adults with disabilities, and caregivers.
The primary mission of the Machias Area Food Pantry is to provide good healthy food to individuals and families who are food insecure throughout Washington County, Maine.
A broad multi-disciplinary network that works to ensure we can all live healthy, engaged, and secure lives as we age in our homes and communities. With the voices of people with lived experience, we work on policy issues related to…
To provide quality affordable housing
Penobscot Community Health Center (PCHC) is a non-profit organization incorporated in 1997 that is governed by a Board of community volunteers and is the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in Maine. PCHC is driven by its mission…
Providing Dental services to low-income individuals who are uninsured,underinsured, or have other significant financial barriers to accessing care.
Fork Food Lab is a nonprofit food business incubator and shared commercial kitchen focused on growing the local food economy. We support the growth of sustainable Maine-based businesses by providing entrepreneurs with work space,…
Provide free food and personal care items to families in need in Winthrop and Wayne, ME.
Our purpose is to work with people to meet their needs for safe and adequate shelter, clothing, food and basic well-being in a manner that maintains or improves their self worth and dignity.
Fair Tide's mission is to reduce homelessness by providing Housing and support services to individuals and families in the seacoast. Through Fair Tide's permanent housing program, homeless households benefit from intensive case management…
211 Maine helps people in Maine find local resources so they can meet their needs and thrive.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Mid Coast Maine Inc and the most unlike its peers is Saco Food Pantry. 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 29 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 10% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 72 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 My Place Teen Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Trinity Jubilee Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Safe Voices ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds TEDFORD HOUSING ↗
- Who funds Sweetser ↗
- Who funds MAINELY CHARACTER ↗
- Who funds TREE STREET YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds Good Shepherd Food Bank ↗
- Who funds St Mary's Health System ↗
- Who funds CHURCH COMMUNITY OUTREACH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds University of Southern Maine Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of New England ↗
- Who funds Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program ↗
- Who funds SACO FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds BIDDEFORD FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF HOPE NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds United Way of York County ↗
- Who funds WESTBROOK FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds DROP-IN CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY DENTAL ↗
- Who funds The Opportunity Alliance ↗
- Who funds Presumpscot Regional Land Trust ↗
- Who funds Locker Project ↗
- Who funds AVESTA HOUSING MANAGEMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT LEGAL ADVOCACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PREBLE STREET ↗
- Who funds Southern Maine Agency on Aging ↗
- Who funds PROSPERITYME ↗
- Who funds Androscoggin Home Health Services 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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · Saco & Biddeford Savings Charitable Foundation · John T Gorman Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Fisher Charitable Foundation · Good Shepherd Food Bank · Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation Inc · Simmons Foundation - PerkinsThompson · United Way Inc · Virginia Hodgkins Somers Foundation Inc
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 Biddeford and Mechanics Savings Charitable 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.