· Community foundation
Boston Foundation Inc
As Greater Boston's community foundation, the Boston Foundation devotes its resources to expanding opportunities, improving lives and strengthening communities.
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.
The 2,375 grants below total $228,371,395 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $246,453,204 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $18,081,809 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k236 grants · $1.7M
- $10k–50k1366 grants · $28M
- $50k–250k600 grants · $59M
- $250k+173 grants · $140M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund | $6,645,940 |
| Partners Healthcare System Inc | $5,603,180 |
| Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund | $5,376,841 |
| Trustees of Tufts College | $5,005,000 |
| McLean Hospital | $4,250,000 |
| United Negro College Fund Inc | $4,003,770 |
| The Barack Obama Foundation | $2,650,000 |
| New Profit Inc | $2,601,500 |
| Embrace Boston Inc | $2,543,023 |
| Justice Catalyst Inc | $2,500,000 |
| Carbon Mapper Inc | $2,500,000 |
| United Way of Massachusetts Bay Inc | $2,273,084 |
| Social Finance Inc | $2,120,000 |
| Greenlight Fund Inc | $2,096,500 |
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | $2,050,763 |
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, $65.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
1751 repeat relationships — 1179 still active in FY2025, 572 since wound down; 48 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14M 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
BOSTON BALLET INC9× · 2017–2025 · $24M · revenue +27%- NENEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC9× · 2017–2025 · $22M · revenue +24%
- ACAMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEES9× · 2017–2025 · $18M · revenue +141%
Funded once
- JDJUST DETENTION INTERNATIONALone grant, 2022 · $2.0M · revenue -38% · 42% of their budget
- DMDEMOCRACY MATTERS FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $1.9M · revenue +416% · 27% of their budget
- ISILLINOIS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTEone grant, 2022 · $1.8M · revenue -70% · 69% of their budget
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.
Founded 131 years ago, the boston architectural college is a recognized institution providing excellence in practice-integrated design education to members of diverse communities with students representing 35 countries. the bac offers…
Education of students
Emmanuel college is a coed, residential catholic liberal arts and sciences college with over 2,046 undergraduate and graduate students.
See schedule ouniversity of new haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts & professional education.
Mbr engages with public and private leaders to develop public policy solutions that enhance massachusetts' long-term competitive position and make it a highly-desirable place to do business within a global economy.
To advance the highest standards of excellence for the legal profession, to facilitate access to justice, and to serve the community at large.
Engaging local business leaders in governmental and philanthropic activities, connecting and educating its members, and providing a forum for addressing the needs of the cambridge, massachusetts business community.
The common application promotes access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process.
Advancing health through research, education, clinical practice, and community partnerships; providing each person the best care in the right place, at the right time, every time.
Deliver world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential.
Massedco works to bridge the gap in postsecondary education attainment for low-income, first generation youth and adults in massachusetts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Health Care for All Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cathleen Stone Island Outward Bound. 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 30 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
1858 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. 1858 of the 2,000 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds BOSTON BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds AMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds THE MIAMI FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds NEW PROFIT INC ↗
- Who funds GREENLIGHT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE CATALYST INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW COMMONWEALTH RACIAL EQUITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE CATALYST LAW INC ↗
- Who funds THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART INC ↗
- Who funds INTEND HEALTH STRATEGIES INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds EMBRACE BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds BPE INC ↗
- Who funds BANK OF AMERICA CHARITABLE GIFT FD ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds Social Finance Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds EMERSON UMBRELLA INC ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds ROCKPORT MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds JUMPSTART FOR YOUNG CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR ALL INC ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN ↗
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: Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · The Cabot Family Charitable Trust · Boston Charitable Trust Fund City of Boston Trust Office · Children's Hospital Corporation · Cambridge Savings Charitable Foundation Inc · The Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation · Riley Mabel Louise Tr Uwill · Yawkey Foundation II · The Hyams Foundation Inc · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Wellington Management 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 Boston Foundation Inc 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.
- The Hyde Square Task Force Inc — 52% of income from government
- East Boston Social Centers Inc — 50% of income from government
- Justice Resource Institute Inc — 48% of income from government
- Boston Harbor Now Inc — 45% of income from government
- Cardinal Cushing Centers Inc — 40% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- Neighborhood Villages Inc — 33% of income from government
- Bridge Over Troubled Waters Inc — 32% of income from government
- America Scores New England Dba Boston Scores — 30% of income from government
- Citizens' Housing and Planning Association Inc — 26% of income from government
- More Than Words Inc — 24% of income from government
- Uncornered Inc — 24% of income from government
- United Way of Massachusetts Bay Inc — 23% of income from government
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Up Education Network — 22% of income from government
- Horizons for Homeless Children — 21% of income from government
- HomeStart Inc — 20% of income from government
- Ellis Early Learning Inc — 20% of income from government
- The Broad Institute Inc — 19% of income from government
- Greater Lowell Community Foundation Inc — 18% of income from government
- Boston After School & Beyond Inc — 15% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Community Servings Inc — 12% of income from government
- Nectar Community Investments Inc — 12% of income from government
- Silent Spring Institute Inc — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- Social Finance Inc — 12% of income from government
- English for New Bostonians Inc — 11% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Southcoast Community Foundation Inc — 10% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Lawrence Communityworks Inc — 9% of income from government
- Women's Lunch Place Inc — 8% of income from government
- Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program Inc — 8% of income from government
- Boston Debate League Incorporated — 7% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Smart From the Start Inc — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Economic Mobility Pathways Inc — 6% of income from government
- Emmanuel Music Inc — 5% of income from government
- Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology — 5% of income from government
- Rockport Music Inc — 4% of income from government
- Community Foundation for MetroWest Inc — 4% of income from government
- Upstream Usa Inc — 4% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Celebrity Series of Boston Inc — 3% of income from government
- Masschallenge Inc — 3% of income from government
- Boston Lyric Opera Company — 3% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- 826 Boston Inc — 3% of income from government
- Breakthrough Greater Boston Inc — 2% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Entrepreneurship for All Inc — 2% of income from government
- Boston Children's Chorus Inc — 2% of income from government
- Trio New College Network Inc — 2% of income from government
- Essex County Community Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Camp Harbor View Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Emerson Umbrella Inc — 1% of income from government
- New England Conservatory of Music — 1% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 1% of income from government
- The Baseball Inc — 1% of income from government
- Simmons University — 1% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Friends of the Public Garden Inc — 1% of income from government
- Edvestors Inc — 1% of income from government
- Berklee College of Music Inc — 1% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Uaspire Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Bottom Line Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Ballet Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Emerald Necklace Conservancy Inc — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Science — 0% of income from government
- Year Up Inc — 0% of income from government
- Amherst College Trustees — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Fine Arts — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 0% of income from government
- Milton Academy — 0% of income from government
- Steppingstone Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Buckingham Browne & Nichols School — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.