Skip to content
Plinth

· Private foundation

Courtney and Victoria Buffum Family Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$433k
Granted FY2025still arriving
15
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$200k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20192025.

Philanthropy$11MYouth Development$2.3MHealth$1.1MEducation$1.0MHousing & Shelter$215kRecreation & Sports$150kHuman Services$68kCivil Rights$43kOther$0
02FY2025 · 15 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k8 grants · $49k
  • $10k–50k4 grants · $84k
  • $50k–250k3 grants · $300k
$9,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$1.8M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
COTS$200,000
VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION$50,000
COMMUNITY SAILING CENTER$50,000
KING STREET CENTER$30,000
FRIENDS OF FLETCHER FREE LIBRARY$26,000
NEIGHBORS IN ACTION$18,000
COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF VT$10,000
ESSEX CHIPS$9,000
RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE$7,500
VERMONT WORKS FOR WOMEN$7,500
SPECTRUM YOUTH CENTER$5,000
JOHN GRAHAM HOUSING & SERVICES$5,000
PARTNERS IN ADVENTURE INC$5,000
RESOURCE$5,000
BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BURLINGTON INC$5,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY19–25, $61k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.

area typical 8%Howard Center: $3k → 10%FRIENDS OF FLETCHER FREE LIBRARY: $26k → 10%THE JANET MUNT FAMILY ROOM: $5k → 10%Janet S Munt Family Room: $3k → 10%RESOURCE: $5k → 10%RESOURCE: $4k → 10%ReSource: $4k → 10%RESOURCE: $4k → 10%ReSource: $3k → 10%ReSource: $2k → 10%ReSource: $2k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

55%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$2.7M · 18 repeat orgs$2.3M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +22% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.

18 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

18
10

Total granted

$2.7M
$2.0M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+22%
+11%

Still filing today

67%
70%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 39% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $234k went to new ones.

50%100%’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
Human ServicesHealthYouth DevelopmentArts & CultureHousing & ShelterRecreation & SportsOther

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

  • BA
    BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BURLINGTON INC
    7× · 2019–2025 · $2.2M · revenue +90% · 42% of their budget
  • KS
    KING STREET CENTER INC
    4× · 2021–2025 · $58k · revenue +43%
  • VW
    VERMONT WORKS FOR WOMEN INC
    5× · 2021–2025 · $26k · revenue +39%

Funded once

  • CC
    CHAMPLAIN COLLEGE INCORPORATED
    one grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue -3%
  • TU
    THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER
    one grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue +23%
  • RM
    RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF BURLINGTON VERMONT INC
    one grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +5%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Vermont Center for Family Studies

Our mission is to strengthen families and communities by improving human relationships. We do this through the training of expert family therapists, advisors, leaders, and family members in Bowen Family Systems Theory.

Human Services
2
Vermont Achievement Center Inc

Through flexible, diverse and responsive programs, vermont achievement center, inc. (vac) provides a foundation of life skills to prepare individuals to reach their full potential as contributing members of society. all people are capable…

Education
3
Vermont Family Network Inc

Vfn's mission is to empower and support all vermont families of children with special needs.

Human Services
4
Vermont Public Co

Vermont public informs, educates, and entertains through public service journalism and enlightening content rooted in vermont. our storytelling enriches lives and fosters community connection and understanding.

Arts & Culture
5
Cooperation Vermont

The mission of cooperation vermont is to build thriving community economic and enviromental democracy.

Community Improvement
6
Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies Inc

Vcet's purpose is to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship across vermont. this is accomplished by providing expert mentoring and technical assistance, the operation of coworking/incubation facilities and the operation of early stage…

Community Improvement
7
Governor's Institutes of Vermont

Giv empowers young people with intensive, hands-on learning experiences in college settings which inspire their academic and creative passions, build confidence and leadership, and expand their sense of possibility.

8
Elevate Youth Services Inc

Elevate's mission is to promote safety, competence, and confidence as youth create their path through adolescence and into adulthood.elevate provides a wide range of innovative and effective programs that empower and enrich the lives of…

Human Services
9
Community House Inc

Community house, inc. is located in brattleboro, vermont and was organized for the purposes of providing rehabilitative services to the people of windham county and elsewhere. community house currently offers a short-term residential…

Human Services
10
Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Inc

The mission is to enable Vermonters who are blind or visually impaired to be more independent, cultivate adaptive skills and improve their quality of life

11
Health Care & Rehabilitation Services of Southeastern Vt Inc

Hcrs' mission is to provide creative, collaborative, and compassionate health care services that are responsive to the needs of our communities.

Health
12
Vermont Psychological Services Former Behavior Therapy & Psychotherapy

Provide psychology & counseling to members of society who display behavior & psychological problems.

Health

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Inclusive Arts Vermont Inc and the most unlike its peers is Partners in Adventure Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 23 of the 32 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.

2
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
22/23
Grantees still filing
15/23
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

THE VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION — $10,625,000 · PhilanthropyTHE VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONBOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BURLINGTON INC — $2,235,000 · Youth DevelopmentBOYS AND GIRLS C…+1 more — $17,000 · Youth DevelopmentTHE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER — $1,000,000 · Health+4 more — $27,000 · HealthCHAMPLAIN COLLEGE INCORPORATED — $1,000,000 · EducationCOMMUNITY SAILING CENTER — $150,000 · OtherNEIGHBORS IN ACTION — $43,000 · OtherSPECTRUM YOUTH CENTER — $25,000 · OtherBRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION — $24,000 · OtherCOMMUNITY COLLEGE OF VT — $20,000 · OtherVERMONT WORKS FOR WOMEN INC — $25,500 · OtherPARTNERS IN ADVENTURE INC — $24,000 · OtherINCLUSIVE ARTS VERMONT INC — $20,000 · Other+7 more — $39,500 · OtherCOMMITTEE ON TEMPORARY SHELTER INC — $200,000 · Housing & ShelterThe John W Graham Emergency Shelter and Service Inc — $15,000 · Housing & ShelterKING STREET CENTER INC — $58,000 · Human ServicesFRIENDS OF THE FLETCHER FREE LIBRARY — $26,000 · Human ServicesRESOURCE A NONPROFIT COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE INC — $24,000 · Human ServicesJanet Munt Family Room — $8,000 · Human Services+2 more — $6,000 · Human Services
Philanthropy$10,625,000Youth Development$2,252,000Health$1,027,000Education$1,000,000Other$371,000Housing & Shelter$215,000Human Services$122,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetTHE VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION — $10,625,000 over 4y, 15% of budgetBOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF BURLINGTON INC — $2,235,000 over 7y, 42% of budgetCHAMPLAIN COLLEGE INCORPORATED — $1,000,000 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetTHE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER — $1,000,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetKING STREET CENTER INC — $58,000 over 4y, 1.1% of budgetFRIENDS OF THE FLETCHER FREE LIBRARY — $26,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetVERMONT WORKS FOR WOMEN INC — $25,500 over 5y, 0.5% of budgetPARTNERS IN ADVENTURE INC — $24,000 over 7y, 2.6% of budgetRESOURCE A NONPROFIT COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE INC — $24,000 over 7y, 0.1% of budgetBRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION — $24,000 over 4y, 66% of budgetINCLUSIVE ARTS VERMONT INC — $20,000 over 5y, 1.6% of budgetEssex Chips Inc — $17,000 over 3y, 6.7% of budgetVERMONTS CAMP TA-KUM-TA — $15,500 over 6y, 0.2% of budgetThe John W Graham Emergency Shelter and Service Inc — $15,000 over 3y, 0.3% of budgetSARA M HOLBROOK COMMUNITY CENTER INC — $10,000 over 2y, 0.5% of budgetJanet Munt Family Room — $8,000 over 2y, 0.4% of budgetGreen Mountain Mobile Therapy — $6,000 over 2y, 10% of budgetRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF BURLINGTON VERMONT INC — $5,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetHowardCenter Inc — $3,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetSTEPS TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC — $3,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetCHANDLER CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC — $2,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budget
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.

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.

The Vermont Community FoundationVT38.9× affinity17 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Vermont Community Foundation · National Life Group Charitable Foundation Inc · Fanny Allen Corporation · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · The Kelsey Trust · Antonio B and Rita M Pomerleau Foundation Inc · United Way of Northwest Vermont Inc · George W Mergens Foundation · Francis T & Louis T Nichols Foundation · Agnes M Lindsay Trust · Price Chopper's Golub Foundation · Oakland 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 Courtney and Victoria Buffum Family Foundation 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 50%5%19%42%75%your share of their income ↑0%23%45%68%90%share of the org’s income from governmentmedian 16%
  • Steps to End Domestic Violence Inc71% of income from government
  • Vermont Works for Women Inc52% of income from government
  • Committee On Temporary Shelter Inc52% of income from government
  • Janet Munt Family Room44% of income from government
  • King Street Center Inc43% of income from government
  • Essex Chips Inc21% of income from government
  • Boys and Girls Club of Burlington Inc16% of income from government
  • HowardCenter Inc8% of income from government
  • Chandler Center for the Arts Inc2% of income from government
  • Resource a Nonprofit Community Enterprise Inc2% of income from government
  • The University of Vermont Medical Center1% of income from government
  • Champlain College Incorporated0% of income from government
  • Inclusive Arts Vermont Inc0% of income from government
  • The Vermont Community Foundation0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
5get no government money at all
3report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
3rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–90%
typical government reliance, FY2025

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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 32 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph