· Private foundation
Boston Baptist Social Union
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $576k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $171k
- $250k+1 grant · $263k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES OF MASSACHUSETTS | $263,300 |
| RUGGLES BAPTIST CHURCH | $70,990 |
| FIRST NEPALI BAPTIST CHURCH OF SOMERVILLE | $50,000 |
| MESSIAH BAPTIST CHURCH | $50,000 |
| FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH LYNN | $40,000 |
| BOSTON MISSIONARY BAPTIST COMMUNITY CENTER | $35,000 |
| FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF JAMAICA PLAIN | $35,000 |
| OVERSEAS BURMESE CHRISTION FELLOWSHIP | $33,100 |
| FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF MEDFORD | $30,460 |
| CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH OF LOWELL | $30,000 |
| LOWELL INTERNATIONAL CHURCH | $30,000 |
| THE BOSTON PROJECT MINISTRIES | $30,000 |
| BOSTON TRINITY ACADEMY | $30,000 |
| MIRACLE MILE MINISTRIES | $30,000 |
| TWELFTH BAPTIST CHURCH | $20,300 |
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 (FY17–25, $386k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
52 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 10 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $92k 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
- MBMASSACHUSETTS BAPTIST MULTICULTURAL MINISTRIES7× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +180% · 78% of their budget
- BMBOSTON MISSIONARY BAPTIST COMMUNITY CENTER INC7× · 2017–2025 · $216k · revenue +671% · 37% of their budget
- BPBOSTON PROJECT MINISTRIES INC7× · 2017–2025 · $189k · revenue +204%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $106k
- S1SAMH 12TH BAPTIST CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $20k
- LPLINCOLN PARK BAPTIST CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $10k
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.
To provide a transitional living faclity for battered women, women released from prison and women rehabing from drug addiction
Restore inmates and those addicted back in to society
Biblical counseling
Church
Education, Humanitarian, Community outreach and evangelism ministry. Provide Orphan Care, Train Youth in Career Paths, Train Pastors and Others in Bible School, Prison Ministry, Provide Elementary School for about 300 Children
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boston Project Ministries Inc and the most unlike its peers is Remember Those in Captivity Ministries Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 19 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 6% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 71 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 MASSACHUSETTS BAPTIST MULTICULTURAL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds BOSTON MISSIONARY BAPTIST COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON PROJECT MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN YOUTH CONFERENCE AT OCEAN PARK INC ↗
- Who funds UNITEBOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Remember Those in Captivity Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds CITY STRINGS UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON TRINITY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds COMPASS POINT MINISTRIES 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: Imago Dei Fund · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · The Church Home Society Inc · Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Eastern Bank Foundation · Protein Foundation · The Lenny Zakim Fund · Essex County Community Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Boston Foundation Inc · Servant Foundation · Network for Good
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 Boston Baptist Social Union 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.
- Communities Together Inc — 15% of income from government
- City Strings United Inc — 7% 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.