· Public charity
Davis Conservation Foundation
To support the wise utilization, protection and advancement of our physical environment and the different natural forms of life that inhabit it, including wildlife, sea life and mankind as they are impacted by the environment.
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 62 grants below total $1,504,783 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,536,283 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $31,500 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
- Under $10k6 grants · $43k
- $10k–50k51 grants · $953k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $508k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Maine Coast Heritage Trust | $181,000 |
| Manomet Inc | $151,275 |
| Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests | $76,000 |
| Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust | $50,000 |
| Upper Saco Valley Land Trust | $50,000 |
| Northern Forest Center | $45,000 |
| University System of New Hampshire | $37,170 |
| Conservation Law Foundation | $35,000 |
| National Wildlife Federation | $34,950 |
| Scarborough Land Conservation Trust | $30,000 |
| Connecticut River Watershed Council | $29,790 |
| Loon Preservation Committee | $27,294 |
| Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire | $25,048 |
| New Learning Journey | $25,000 |
| Bigelow Laboratory For Ocean Sciences | $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 (FY18–23, $61k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 67% 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.
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 Davis Conservation Foundation’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, 94% of the giving stays in ME; read by stated purpose it is 81% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +68% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
119 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2024, 74 since wound down; 16 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $271k 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
- MIMANOMET INC3× · 2020–2024 · $176k · revenue +84%
- SFSOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS5× · 2017–2024 · $157k · revenue +38%
- NFNorthern Forest Center Inc4× · 2017–2024 · $100k · revenue +364%
Funded once
- AFAMERICAN FOREST FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +80%
- USUNION SALMON ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $30k
- TUTROUT UNLIMITED SEBAGO CHAPTERgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +846%
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.
Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.
The mission of Islesboro Islands Trust is to enhance the quality of residents' lives through the preservation of open space, educate all residents as to the value of the island's natural ecosystems, and act as an environmental advocate on…
Conservation and preservation of land.
Founded in 1966, Aspetuck Land Trust is a non-profit membership ogranization whose mission is to protect land forever and connect people to the natural world.
The Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative (EMCI) is a non-profit organization with broad conservation interests that seeks to: 1) Foster environmentally sustainable communities of the eastern Maine coast; 2) Encourage an appreciation of…
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
The mission of the mount desert land & garden preserve is to conserve and share the beauty of our historic lands and gardens.
The Francestown Land Trusts mission is to help preserve natural areas significant to the Francestown NH area and to provide conservation opportunities and education for area residents.
The monhegan associates is a land trust dedicated to the ongoing preservation of the natural wild beauty and biotic communities of more than 350 acres of wildlands on monhegan island in maine.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Downeast Lakes Land Trust and the most unlike its peers is Maplestone. 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 32 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.4% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
224 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. 224 of the 256 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 Maine Coast Heritage Trust ↗
- Who funds MANOMET INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Northern Forest Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CASCO BAY ↗
- Who funds UPPER SACO VALLEY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH CONSERVATION TRUST DBA FALMOUTH LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWOODS STEWARDSHIP CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BAXTER STATE PARK ↗
- Who funds Midcoast Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Appalachian Mountain Club ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND FORESTRY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAND TRUST ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Audubon Society of New Hampshire ↗
- Who funds Maine Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds Frenchman Bay Conservancy ↗
- Who funds LAKE STEWARDS OF MAINE - MAINE VOLUNTEER LAKE MONITORING PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Natural Resources Council of Maine Inc ↗
- Who funds Loon Preservation Committee ↗
- Who funds MAINE LAKES SOCIETY DBA MAINE LAKES ↗
- Who funds Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND TRAILS ↗
- Who funds Scarborough Land Conservation Trust ↗
- Who funds THE ALLAGASH WILDERNESS WATERWAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY TRAILS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOREST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds INLAND WOODS TRAILS ↗
- Who funds SEACOAST SCIENCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds DOWNEAST SALMON FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds Forest Society of Maine ↗
- Who funds YORK LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds BLUE HILL HERITAGE TRUST ↗
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: Onion Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Quimby Family Foundation · John Sage Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust · Fields Pond Foundation Inc · The Nature Conservancy · Momentum Conservation · New Hampshire Charitable Foundation · Horizon Foundation Inc · Maine Coast Heritage Trust
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 Davis Conservation 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- New England Forestry Foundation Inc — 88% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Cold Hollow to Canada Incorporated — 56% of income from government
- Green Mountain Conservancy Incorporated — 49% of income from government
- Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association — 47% of income from government
- Vermont Youth Conservation Corps Inc — 47% of income from government
- Putney Mountain Association Incorporated — 44% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc — 42% of income from government
- Northwoods Stewardship Center — 40% of income from government
- Connecticut River Watershed Council Inc — 40% of income from government
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Vermont Woodlands Association — 21% of income from government
- The Vermont River Conservancy Inc — 21% of income from government
- Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute Incorporated — 16% of income from government
- Kingdom Trail Association Inc — 14% of income from government
- Manomet Inc — 12% of income from government
- Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium — 7% of income from government
- Hubbard Brook Research Foundation — 6% of income from government
- Bull Creek Common Lands — 4% of income from government
- The Vermont Center for Ecostudies Inc — 4% of income from government
- Northern Forest Canoe Trail Inc — 4% of income from government
- Upper Valley Trails Alliance — 3% of income from government
- Babson College — 3% of income from government
- Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation — 2% of income from government
- South Hero Land Trust Inc — 1% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Vermont Institute of Natural Science 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Davis Conservation Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Davis Conservation Foundation 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.