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· 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.

$1.5M
Granted FY2024still arriving
62
Grants FY2024still arriving
7
States reached
$181k
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 FY20172024.

Environment$5.5MRecreation & Sports$581kAnimals$314kYouth Development$121kScience & Tech$105kEducation$77kArts & Culture$68kFood & Nutrition$52kOther$0
02FY2024 · 62 grants

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
$17,050
Median grant
7
States reached
$40M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
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
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 (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.

area typical 9%Vermont River Conservancy: $15k → 9%Young Mens Christian Association Auburn-Lewiston Maine: $10k → 13%Vermont River Conservancy Inc: $8k → 9%Vermont River Conservancy: $8k → 9%Portland Parks Conservancy: $10k → 7%Portland Parks Conservancy: $10k → 7%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.

Which US states your grants reach

ME
VT
NH
WA
NY
MA
WV
VA
NM
TN
DC

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.

04

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.

Davis Conservation Foundationlessmore of its giving
Placed by recipient address · 11% directed abroad (not shown)

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.

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.

74%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$5.1M · 119 repeat orgs$1.7M to everyone else

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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

119
117

Total granted

$5.1M
$1.5M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+68%
+41%

Still filing today

100%
74%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $271k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

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

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
EnvironmentRecreation & SportsArts & CultureAnimalsEducationScience & TechOther

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

  • MI
    MANOMET INC
    3× · 2020–2024 · $176k · revenue +84%
  • SF
    SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS
    5× · 2017–2024 · $157k · revenue +38%
  • NF
    Northern Forest Center Inc
    4× · 2017–2024 · $100k · revenue +364%

Funded once

  • AF
    AMERICAN FOREST FOUNDATIONgraduated
    one grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +80%
  • US
    UNION SALMON ASSOCIATION
    one grant, 2023 · $30k
  • TU
    TROUT UNLIMITED SEBAGO CHAPTERgraduated
    one 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.

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
Wetlands Foundation
Environment
2
Kennebunk Land Trust

Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.

Environment
3
Massachusetts Outdoor Heritage Foundation Inc Attn Susan Sacco
4
Islesboro Islands Trust

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…

Philanthropy
5
Protect Maine's Fishing Heritage Foundation
Environment
6
Massachusetts Land Conservation Trust

Conservation and preservation of land.

Environment
7
Aspetuck Land Trust

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.

Environment
8
Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative

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…

Animals
9
Land Conservancy of West Michigan

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…

Environment
10
Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve

The mission of the mount desert land & garden preserve is to conserve and share the beauty of our historic lands and gardens.

11
Francestown Land Trust Inc

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.

Environment
12
Monhegan Associates Inc

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.

Environment

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.

← shrinkinggrowing →↓ leaning in → pulling backsteadyEnvironmental Conservation …Community FoundationsFaith-Based Liberal Arts Co…Youth Sports ProgramsLocal History MuseumsYmca Youth DevelopmentPolicy Research and Advocacy
the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side
Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number16%1%<5yr12%5%5–10yr19%14%10–20yr19%35%20–35yr16%29%35–55yr18%15%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value16%1%<5yr12%3%5–10yr19%10%10–20yr19%33%20–35yr16%32%35–55yr18%22%55yr+

The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close 0.4% lost their exemption, against 9% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.4%1/253
the rest of the field
9%
844/9,298

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.

05the grantee network

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 20172026, 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.

5
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
88
Early backer (in before they grew)
221/224
Grantees still filing
165/224
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Maine Coast Heritage Trust — $241,000 · EnvironmentMaine Coast Heritage TrustMANOMET INC — $176,443 · EnvironmentSOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS — $157,000 · Environment+107 more — $3,442,417 · Environment+107 moreTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY — $125,000 · OtherTHE NATURE CONSERVANCYUPPER SACO VALLEY LAND TRUST — $90,000 · OtherUPPER SACO VALLEY LAND…+49 more — $1,060,267 · Other+49 moreNorthern Forest Center Inc — $100,000 · EducationNORTHWOODS STEWARDSHIP CENTER — $76,930 · EducationUPPER VALLEY TRAILS ALLIANCE — $50,000 · EducationMaine Huts & Trails — $25,000 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FOUNDATION INCORPORATED — $23,650 · EducationBABSON COLLEGE — $20,000 · EducationKISMET ROCK FOUNDATION — $20,000 · EducationTrustees of Saint Joseph's College Saint Joseph's College of Maine — $11,500 · Education+1 more — $10,000 · EducationMaine Center for Coastal Fisheries — $100,000 · Science & TechBigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences — $80,000 · Science & TechWOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION — $25,000 · Science & TechMOUNT WASHINGTON OBSERVATORY — $17,050 · Science & TechGLOUCESTER MARINE GENOMICS INSTITUTE INCORPORATED — $15,000 · Science & TechGULF OF MAINE LOBSTER FOUNDATION — $15,000 · Science & TechNATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION — $49,950 · AnimalsDOWNEAST SALMON FEDERATION — $45,000 · AnimalsAtlantic Salmon Federation (US) Inc — $30,000 · AnimalsTROUT UNLIMITED INC — $30,000 · AnimalsTHE LOBSTER FOUNDATION OF MASSACHUSETTS INC — $25,000 · AnimalsGULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE — $20,000 · AnimalsTHE CENTER FOR WILDLIFE — $20,000 · AnimalsDOWNEAST INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED MARINE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION INC — $20,000 · AnimalsPROJECT SHARE — $10,000 · AnimalsSEACOAST SCIENCE CENTER INC — $45,061 · Arts & CultureMAINE NATURAL HISTORY OBSERVATORY — $33,200 · Arts & CultureNORTHERN FOREST CANOE TRAIL INC — $32,500 · Arts & CultureFriends of Katahdin Woods & Waters — $20,000 · Arts & CultureNEW HAMPSHIRE PUBLIC RADIO INC — $20,000 · Arts & CultureWABANAKI CULTURAL PRESERVATION COALITION — $18,500 · Arts & CultureFRANCIS MALCOLM SCIENCE CENTER INC — $10,000 · Arts & CultureVERMONT HUTS ASSOCIATION LTD — $35,254 · Recreation & SportsHIGH PEAKS ALLIANCE — $25,000 · Recreation & SportsMaine GearShare — $25,000 · Recreation & SportsMt Ascutney Outdoors Inc — $20,000 · Recreation & SportsFRIENDS OF CONSTITUTION PARK OSSIPEE — $15,000 · Recreation & SportsFRIENDS OF HOPE CEMETERY & WOODS — $15,000 · Recreation & SportsAPPALACHIAN TRAIL CONSERVANCY — $15,000 · Recreation & SportsFriends of Quarry Road — $10,000 · Recreation & Sports
Environment$4,016,860Other$1,275,267Education$337,080Science & Tech$252,050Animals$249,950Arts & Culture$179,261Recreation & Sports$160,254

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

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetMaine Coast Heritage Trust — $241,000 over 4y, 0.8% of budgetMANOMET INC — $176,443 over 3y, 1.8% of budgetSOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS — $157,000 over 5y, 0.6% of budgetTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY — $125,000 over 5y, 0.0% of budgetNorthern Forest Center Inc — $100,000 over 4y, 1.1% of budgetMaine Center for Coastal Fisheries — $100,000 over 4y, 4.5% of budgetFRIENDS OF CASCO BAY — $100,000 over 4y, 3.4% of budgetUPPER SACO VALLEY LAND TRUST — $90,000 over 3y, 2.9% of budgetCONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC — $85,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetFALMOUTH CONSERVATION TRUST DBA FALMOUTH LAND TRUST — $84,000 over 4y, 23% of budgetBrunswick-Topsham Land Trust Inc — $80,000 over 3y, 1.8% of budgetBigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences — $80,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetNATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC — $78,065 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetNORTHWOODS STEWARDSHIP CENTER — $76,930 over 4y, 1.3% of budgetFRIENDS OF BAXTER STATE PARK — $70,000 over 4y, 5.9% of budgetMidcoast Conservancy — $65,000 over 5y, 0.9% of budgetAppalachian Mountain Club — $61,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetNEW ENGLAND FORESTRY FOUNDATION INC — $60,000 over 3y, 0.6% of budgetLAND TRUST ALLIANCE INC — $60,000 over 3y, 0.1% of budgetAudubon Society of New Hampshire — $57,500 over 3y, 1.0% of budgetMaine Audubon Society — $57,254 over 3y, 0.7% of budgetFrenchman Bay Conservancy — $55,000 over 4y, 1.3% of budgetLAKE STEWARDS OF MAINE - MAINE VOLUNTEER LAKE MONITORING PROGRAM — $55,000 over 4y, 4.2% of budgetNatural Resources Council of Maine Inc — $55,000 over 3y, 0.6% of budgetLoon Preservation Committee — $54,327 over 3y, 2.0% of budgetMAINE LAKES SOCIETY DBA MAINE LAKES — $50,400 over 3y, 6.6% of budgetCoastal Rivers Conservation Trust — $50,000 over 3y, 1.8% of budgetPORTLAND TRAILS — $50,000 over 3y, 4.0% of budgetScarborough Land Conservation Trust — $50,000 over 2y, 1.4% of budgetTHE ALLAGASH WILDERNESS WATERWAY FOUNDATION — $50,000 over 3y, 28% of budgetUPPER VALLEY TRAILS ALLIANCE — $50,000 over 3y, 5.9% of budgetAMERICAN FOREST FOUNDATION — $50,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetNATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION — $49,950 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetINLAND WOODS TRAILS — $47,500 over 4y, 3.8% of budgetSEACOAST SCIENCE CENTER INC — $45,061 over 3y, 0.8% of budgetTHE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND — $45,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetDOWNEAST SALMON FEDERATION — $45,000 over 3y, 1.4% of budgetForest Society of Maine — $45,000 over 3y, 1.1% of budgetYORK LAND TRUST — $45,000 over 3y, 1.6% of budgetBLUE HILL HERITAGE TRUST — $45,000 over 3y, 2.2% of budgetCoastal Mountains Land Trust — $45,000 over 3y, 1.0% of budgetMaine Island Trail Association — $43,706 over 4y, 1.6% of budgetSoutheast Land Trust of New Hampshire — $40,737 over 2y, 0.2% of budgetMAINE ASSOCIATION OF CONSERVATION DISTRICTS — $40,034 over 4y, 8.6% of budgetVERMONT YOUTH CONSERVATION CORPS INC — $40,000 over 3y, 0.4% of budgetRIPPLEFFECT INC — $40,000 over 3y, 2.3% of budgetPresumpscot Regional Land Trust — $40,000 over 2y, 6.0% of budgetLoon Echo Land Trust Inc — $40,000 over 2y, 4.0% 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.

Onion FoundationME149.7× affinity80 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 60%5%19%42%75%your share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from governmentmedian 16%
  • New England Forestry Foundation Inc88% of income from government
  • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution63% of income from government
  • Cold Hollow to Canada Incorporated56% of income from government
  • Green Mountain Conservancy Incorporated49% of income from government
  • Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association47% of income from government
  • Vermont Youth Conservation Corps Inc47% of income from government
  • Putney Mountain Association Incorporated44% of income from government
  • Vermont Land Trust Inc42% of income from government
  • Northwoods Stewardship Center40% of income from government
  • Connecticut River Watershed Council Inc40% of income from government
  • Center for Coastal Studies Inc26% of income from government
  • Vermont Woodlands Association21% of income from government
  • The Vermont River Conservancy Inc21% of income from government
  • Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute Incorporated16% of income from government
  • Kingdom Trail Association Inc14% of income from government
  • Manomet Inc12% of income from government
  • Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium7% of income from government
  • Hubbard Brook Research Foundation6% of income from government
  • Bull Creek Common Lands4% of income from government
  • The Vermont Center for Ecostudies Inc4% of income from government
  • Northern Forest Canoe Trail Inc4% of income from government
  • Upper Valley Trails Alliance3% of income from government
  • Babson College3% of income from government
  • Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation2% of income from government
  • South Hero Land Trust Inc1% of income from government
  • Appalachian Mountain Club1% of income from government
  • Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc1% of income from government
  • Vermont Institute of Natural Science Inc0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
6get no government money at all
42report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
3rely on government for over half their income
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.

05Through Plinth

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.

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 256 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 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph