· Private foundation
Boston Fatherless & Widows Society
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $269k
- $250k+1 grant · $277k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $277,075 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| COMPASS WORKING CAPITAL | $25,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY CAMP WONDERLAND | $20,000 |
| BROOKVIEW HOUSE | $17,000 |
| CASA ESPERANZA INC | $15,000 |
| WALKER THERAPUTIC & EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS | $15,000 |
| CASA MYRNA | $15,000 |
| Women's Bar Foundation | $15,000 |
| THE SECOND STEP | $12,000 |
| Jewish Family and Children's Service | $10,000 |
| ROSIE'S PLACE | $10,000 |
| CROSSROADS FOR KIDS | $10,000 |
| YOUTH GUIDANCE | $10,000 |
| ST MARYS CENTER FOR WOMEN AND | $10,000 |
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, $267k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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 +47% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 2 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- WLWOMEN'S LUNCH PLACE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $100k · revenue +141%
- WIWALKER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $87k · revenue +61%
- CMCASA MYRNA VAZQUEZ INC6× · 2020–2025 · $72k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- NCNUESTRA COMUNIDAD DEVELOPMENT CORPone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue +18%
- YYWone grant, 2022 · $15k
- HRHUMAN RELATIONS SERVICE INCone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue -2%
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.
Metro housing boston mobilizes wide-ranging resources to provide innovative and personalized services that lead families and individuals to housing stability, economic security, and an improved quality of life.
Maha breaks down barriers facing first-time and first-generation home buyers and owners through education, counseling, advocacy, and grassroots organizing.
To empower and support positive choices for all and to educate and take action in the community for the prevention of oppression and violence.
Empowering children, young adults and families to achieve greater independence and emotional well-being.
Transition house is a human services agency dedicated to preventing and ending domestic violence. the agency provides a continuum of housing resources and holistic support for survivors of violence and their children, as well as prevention…
Lifestream, inc. (the organization") provides community-based services that support individuals in attaining greater independence, promising opportunities, and lives that are meaningful and fulfilling on their own terms.
The mission of the boston health care for the homeless program (bhchp) is to provide or assure access to the highest quality health care for all individuals and families experiencing homelessness in our community.
The boston area rape crisis center (barcc) works to end sexual violence through healing and social change. as the only rape crisis center in greater boston and one of the nation's oldest, barcc provides free, inclusive, empowerment-based…
Bay cove human services' mission is to partner with people to overcome challenges and realize personal potential. bay cove pursues this mission by providing individualized and compassionate services to people facing the challenges…
To advance the interests of the human services sector and providers through advocacy, education, and engagement of diverse stakeholders for collective impact.
To empower individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, while partnering with employers to hire, develop, and retain productive workforces.
Mfhc is committed to ending systemic housing discrimination and creating inclusive communities through education, outreach, advocacy, housing counseling and enforcement.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Home for Little Wanderers Inc and the most unlike its peers is City Mission 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 45 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 37 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 WOMEN'S LUNCH PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds WALKER INC ↗
- Who funds CASA MYRNA VAZQUEZ INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOME FOR LITTLE WANDERERS INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKVIEW HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THE SECOND STEP INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Health Care Without Walls Inc ↗
- Who funds COMPASS WORKING CAPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS FOR KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds St Mary's Center for Women & Children Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CARROLL CENTER FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds NUESTRA COMUNIDAD DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CASA ESPERANZA INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RELATIONS SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds REACH BEYOND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIPWORKS 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: Boston Foundation Inc · Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Cambridge Savings Charitable Foundation Inc · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Boston Evening Clinic Foundation Inc · Adelard & Valeda Roy Foundation · Anna B Stearns Charitable Foundation Inc · Boston Charitable Trust Fund City of Boston Trust Office
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 Fatherless & Widows Society 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.
- Casa Esperanza Inc — 59% of income from government
- Reach Beyond Domestic Violence Inc — 53% of income from government
- St Mary's Center for Women & Children Inc — 40% of income from government
- The Home for Little Wanderers Inc — 38% of income from government
- Brookview House Inc — 34% of income from government
- Bridge Over Troubled Waters Inc — 32% of income from government
- Walker Inc — 26% of income from government
- The Second Step Inc — 26% of income from government
- Horizons for Homeless Children — 21% of income from government
- Women's Lunch Place Inc — 8% of income from government
- Casa Myrna Vazquez Inc — 5% of income from government
- The Carroll Center for the Blind Inc — 3% of income from government
- Crossroads for Kids Inc — 1% of income from government
- Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc — 1% of income from government
- Compass Working Capital Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rosie's Place 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.
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Find your warmest path to Boston Fatherless & Widows Society through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
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