· Private foundation
Cowie Family Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k29 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST PETERS BY THE SEA EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $10,000 |
| CORNELL JAZZ ENSEMBLES ALUMNI | $3,000 |
| SMITH COLLEGE | $3,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL ARTS RELATIONS | $3,000 |
| CAMBA | $1,500 |
| CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST MEETING HOUSE | $1,000 |
| ANIMAL RESCUE LEAGUE OF BOSTON | $1,000 |
| ALI FORNEY CENTER | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $600 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| WOMENS REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ASSISTANCE | $500 |
| CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES | $300 |
| BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART | $300 |
| TRURO COMMUNITY KITCHEN | $300 |
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 (FY19–22, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +43% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 14 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 FY2025, 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
THE CONTEMPORARY THEATER COMPANY4× · 2019–2023 · $21k · revenue +45%- TTTHE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE7× · 2019–2025 · $16k · revenue +43%
- CICAMBA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $9k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $3k
- BABEACON ACADEMY INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue +92%
- TJTHE JONNYCAKE CENTER INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue +39%
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
Overview - founded in boston by pioneering landscape architect and open space visionary charles eliot in 1891, the trustees is the nation's first and the commonwealth's largest conservation and preservation nonprofit.
Preserve ri's vision is a future where historic preservation creates positive change, making our diverse cultures, the environment, and the economy better for the people who live, visit and work in rhode island. preserve ri's mission is to…
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
Central square theater, the oldest female-led theater organization in greater boston, is an innovator in the non-profit arts field in collaborative leadership. cst engages over 35,000 people annually through live performance, rigorous…
The nantucket conservation foundation owns, protects, and stewards over 9,000 acres of land and coastal shoreline, conserves nantucket's rare and significant natural resources, and engages in impactful ecological research to inform…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sojourner House Inc and the most unlike its peers is Indigenous Women Rising Indigeous Women Rising. 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 39 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 69 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 CONTEMPORARY THEATER COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CAMBA INC ↗
- Who funds ALI FORNEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ARTS RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL RESCUE LEAGUE OF BOSTON ↗
- Who funds American Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE OZARKS ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds PROSPECT PARK ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds WELCOME HOUSE OF SOUTH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds DEXTER KEEZER COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds HELPING OUR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds The Outer Cape Chorale Inc ↗
- Who funds DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RESOURCE CENTER OF SOUTH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds ENV WILDLIFE CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds TRURO COMMUNITY KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds FINE ARTS WORK CENTER IN PROVINCETOWN INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ↗
- Who funds PROVINCETOWN ART ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON ACADEMY 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 Rhode Island Community Foundation · The Champlin Foundation · United Way of Rhode Island Inc · The H Winfield and Phyllis Tucker Family Foundation Inc · Treved Foundation Inc · Tern Foundation · Seamens Long Point Charitable Foundation Inc · Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Trust · Washington Trust Co Charitable Fdn · Mutual Bancorp Foundation Inc Fka Cape Cod 5 Foundation Inc · Cape Cod Foundation Inc · The Pfizer 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 Cowie Family Charitable Trust 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.
- Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Inc — 27% of income from government
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Helping Our Women Inc — 14% of income from government
- The Nature Connection Inc — 5% of income from government
- The Theater Offensive Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% of income from government
- Beacon Academy Inc — 1% of income from government
- Animal Rescue League of Boston — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Cowie Family Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Cowie Family Charitable Trust through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.