· Public charity
Boston Schools Fund
BOSTON SCHOOLS FUND (bsf) is a non-profit organization that advances educational equity through opportunity and access to high-quality schools.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 7 grants below total $458,483 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $868,642 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $410,159 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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k3 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $428k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ATTUNED EDUCATION PARTNERS | $179,940 |
| CONSORTIUM ON REACHING EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION INC | $103,743 |
| THE CANIZALES GROUP LLC | $80,000 |
| BOSTON EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUND | $64,800 |
| FRIENDS OF THE RAFAEL HERNNDEZ SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| THE CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE EDUCATION | $10,000 |
| CONSERVATORY LAB CHARTER SCHOOL | $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 (FY21–22, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of Boston Schools Fund’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 86% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 84% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
20 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down.
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 FY2024, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- 5I50CAN INC3× · 2021–2023 · $928k · revenue +562%
- AOACADEMY OF THE PACIFIC RIM CHARTER SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC4× · 2018–2021 · $405k · revenue +167% · 63% of their budget
PREPARATORY FOUNDATION INC4× · 2017–2022 · $310k · revenue +35%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF EXCEL ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOLS INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $129k · revenue +349%
- TMTHE MATCH FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2017 · $86k · revenue -55%
- BTBRASS TACKS INNOVATIONSone grant, 2021 · $60k
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 promote the financial well-being of bridge boston charter school by raising funds to support various full service and educational activities of the school.
To support the benjamin franklin classical charter public school which promotes a classical education.
To promote the financial well-being of kipp academy lynn public charter school and kipp massachusetts, inc. by soliciting, receiving and administering funds for construction, operation and maintenance of the school, and to support the…
Boston after school & beyond, inc. is a public private partnership that pursues a unified after-school and summer learning system that promotes stakeholder alignment, a focus on results, and access to learning opportunities, particularly…
The mission of the School is to develop global citizens who are compassionate, creative, and technologically proficient individuals in a dynamic and interconnected world.
The primary purpose of boston green academy foundation, inc. is to raise funds to provide financial support for the programs and operations of the boston green academy, a horace mann charter school.
To generate private support for public education on nantucket, to foster private and public partnerships that benefit the children of nantucket public schools, and to honor excellence in teaching and learning.
The foundation's purpose is to provide financial assistance in order to further the educational goals of the alma del mar charter school located in new bedford, ma.
To provide learning excellence and special initiatives grants to teachers and administrators and to provide educational enrichment materials for the belmont public schools system, a school system with a student population of approximately…
New england law/boston dedicates itself to preparing students to be successful lawyers and leaders in the public and private sectors through integrated practical, theoretical and ethical education of the highest caliber and to contributing…
Educational program
The brookline education foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving brookline's commitment to excellence in public education. the foundation raises private funds to support innovative teaching, administrative leadership,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kipp Massachusetts Inc and the most unlike its peers is Margarita Muniz Academy Foundation 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 26 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 44 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 THE BOSTON EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds 50CAN INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKE SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY OF THE PACIFIC RIM CHARTER SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE CHARTER SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PREPARATORY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF EXCEL ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds EDWARD M KENNEDY ACADEMY FOR HEALTH CAREERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KIPP MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of Perry Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE MATCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WARREN-PRESCOTT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KIPP BOSTON FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE JOSEPH P MANNING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON COLLEGIATE CHARTER SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE RAFAEL HERNANDEZ SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MARGARITA MUNIZ ACADEMY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATORY LAB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNION CAPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds EAST BOSTON SOCIAL CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON ARTS ACADEMY FOUNDATION 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: Edvestors Inc · Fidelity Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Barr Foundation · Eastern Bank Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation · One8 Foundation · Wellington Management Foundation · Boston After School & Beyond 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 Boston Schools 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.
- East Boston Social Centers Inc — 40% of income from government
- Margarita Muniz Academy Foundation Inc — 4% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 4% of income from government
- Conservatory Lab Foundation Inc — 1% 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.