· Community foundation
Brookline Community Foundation Inc
The brookline community foundation creates opportunity and promotes equity through the transformative power of giving.
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 35 grants below total $1,552,725 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,591,415 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $38,690 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 $10k3 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $552k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $433k
- $250k+1 grant · $545k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FII-NATIONAL DBA UPTOGETHER | $545,000 |
| TOWN OF BROOKLINE FINANCE DEPARTMENT | $196,500 |
| BROOKLINE TEEN CENTER | $136,000 |
| BROOKLINE CENTER FOR COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH | $100,000 |
| STEPS TO SUCCESS INC | $46,000 |
| PUPPET SHOWPLACE THEATER | $45,000 |
| BUILDING BRIDGES EDUCATION INC | $32,500 |
| TOWN OF BROOKLINEPUBLIC SCHOOLS OF BROOKLINE | $31,400 |
| BROOKLINE INTERACTIVE GROUP | $30,625 |
| BROOKLINE HOUSING AUTHORITY | $30,000 |
| BROOKLINE RECREATION DEPARTMENT | $30,000 |
| BROOKLINE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION | $27,500 |
| TOWN OF BROOKLINEBROOKLINE ADULT AND COMMUNITY EDUCATION | $25,500 |
| SPRINGWELL INC | $25,000 |
| FAMILYAID BOSTON INC | $25,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $833k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 80% 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 9% of Brookline Community Foundation Inc’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, 93% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 96% — more 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +91% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 9 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $658k 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
- BCBROOKLINE COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH CENTER INC DBA THE BROOKLINE CENTER8× · 2017–2025 · $1.5M · revenue +225%
- BTBROOKLINE TEEN CENTER8× · 2017–2025 · $730k · revenue +36% · 37% of their budget
- STSTEPS TO SUCCESS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $566k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- BNBLACK N BROWN CLUB INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $79k · revenue +67%
- WCWellesley Collegegraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +63%
- HWHER WINGS FIRSTone grant, 2024 · $25k
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.
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…
To inspire excitement for learning, create paths to and through college, and promote careers in education.
Big is a community media arts center that provides community cable and online news and information channels for brookline, ma. big facilitates diverse community dialogue, incubates and funds hyperlocal storytelling, arts, journalism and…
Boston community pediatrics (bcp) provides ambulatory pediatric and related health care services to the residents of boston, massachusetts, and surrounding communities. bcp is a new model of innovative pediatric healthcare that addresses…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Bb&n, an all gender day school in cambridge, massachusetts, was established in 1974 by the merger of two independent schools, the buckingham school and the browne & nichols school, founded respectively in 1889 and 1883. located on multiple…
Massachusetts education and career opportunities, inc. (massedco, inc.) is a statewide network of service sites that provides education and career advising to over 12,000 low-income, first generation individuals each year. massedco…
Boston cares organizes and leads team-oriented volunteer opportunities and services in and around boston that have a positive impact on individuals and communities.
The organization's missions is to provide quality child care to children of teachers in the brookline, ma school system and others as per qualification procedures.
Boston center for the arts (bca) is a not-for-profit performing and visual arts campus that supports working artists to create, perform, and exhibit new works; develops new audiences; and connects the arts to the community.
The organization's mission is to provide after school programming for children in grades k-5 in the brookline, massachusetts area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Steps to Success Inc and the most unlike its peers is Women Thriving Inc. 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 27 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
54 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 54 of the 67 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 BROOKLINE COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH CENTER INC DBA THE BROOKLINE CENTER ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE TEEN CENTER ↗
- Who funds STEPS TO SUCCESS INC ↗
- Who funds FII - NATIONAL ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE IMPROVEMENT COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds Cape Cod Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Women Thriving Inc ↗
- Who funds Brookline Arts Center ↗
- Who funds SPRINGWELL INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK N BROWN CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILYAID BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds MAB COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds PUPPET SHOWPLACE INC ↗
- Who funds VINFEN CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE MULTI SERVICE CENTER CORP CENTER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF 2LIFE COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE IL PERETZ SCHOOL OF THE WORKMENS CIRCLE INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTIME UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds EMERALD NECKLACE CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds CARITAS COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds BUILDING BRIDGES EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds MARTIN TRUST PARTNERSHIP IN EDUCATION FOR EARLY LEARNERS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIPWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds ABILITIES DANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds Tactical Reintegration Project Inc ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CITIZENSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds Voices Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE AFFORDABLE 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: The Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation · Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · The Bay State Federal Savings Charitable Foundation · Eastern Cambridge Foundation · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Boston Evening Clinic 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 Brookline Community 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.
- Vinfen Corporation — 83% of income from government
- Mab Community Services Inc — 69% of income from government
- Springwell Inc — 68% of income from government
- Newton Community Service Centers Inc — 20% of income from government
- Women Thriving Inc — 14% of income from government
- New England Hebrew Academy — 10% of income from government
- Project Citizenship Inc — 10% of income from government
- White Snake Projects Inc — 8% of income from government
- 2LIFE Communities Inc — 8% of income from government
- Steps to Success Inc — 5% of income from government
- Voices Boston Inc — 5% of income from government
- Familyaid Boston Inc — 4% of income from government
- Puppet Showplace Inc — 4% of income from government
- Cape Cod Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Brookline Arts Center — 2% of income from government
- Abilities Dance Inc — 1% of income from government
- Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc — 1% of income from government
- Breaktime United Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- Brookline Teen Center — 0% of income from government
- Emerald Necklace Conservancy Inc — 0% of income from government
- Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation 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.