· Public charity
Davis Family Foundation
To provide grants to colleges, universities, and other educational institutions; to hospitals and other health organizations with a primary interest in programs designed to increase the effectiveness or decrease the cost of medical care; and organizations whose customary and primary activity is to promote music, theater, drama, history,…
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $92k
- $10k–50k66 grants · $1.3M
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+2 grants · $652k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sweetser | $400,000 |
| Northeastern University | $252,188 |
| University of Maine System Inc | $170,060 |
| Great Schools Partnership Inc | $161,756 |
| Lifeflight Foundation | $150,000 |
| Woodfords Family Services | $150,000 |
| American Red Cross of Northern New England | $100,000 |
| Maine College of Art & Design | $100,000 |
| STEM Coliseum and Learning Center | $100,000 |
| Olympia Snowe Women's Leadership Institute | $75,000 |
| Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems | $60,144 |
| President and Trustees of Bates College | $57,000 |
| Husson University | $50,000 |
| Mid-Coast Health Net DBA Knox County Health Clinic | $50,000 |
| Maine Mountain Children's House | $40,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 18% 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.
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 6% of Davis Family 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, 100% of the giving stays in ME; read by stated purpose it is 92% — 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 +39% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
211 repeat relationships — 55 still active in FY2024, 156 since wound down; 37 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $767k 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
- MMaineHealth5× · 2018–2023 · $692k · revenue +167%
Great Schools Partnership Inc3× · 2022–2024 · $510k · revenue +0%
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY2× · 2022–2024 · $352k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- AHAcadia Hospital Corp Northern Light Acadia Hospitalone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +23%
- TJTHE JACKSON LABORATORYone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +24%
- PBPenobscot Bay Medical Centerone grant, 2018 · $100k · revenue -73%
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 mission of the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts is to inspire, engage and educate through the exhibition, preservation and collection of photographic works. The Museums programs address contemporary, historical, cultural and…
The Academy is dedicated to academic excellence, commitment to the performing arts, leadership, integrity, and a virtuous code of conduct, all of which prepare students to meet the demands of a contemporary world through thoughtful…
To enrich, educate, and entertain the community through film and art.
To maintain a library proving lending services to all residents of Monhegan Island, ME.
The mission of the Maine Lighthouse Museum is to educate the public regarding the long-standing traditions, heroism and progress of America's Lighthouse and Lifesaving services and the United States Coast Guard through the conservation and…
Preserve the cultural heritage of forestry and conservation in the state of Maine and to educate visitors on the contributions of logging and the logging industry to the growth of Maine.
The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Company & Museum preserves and operates hstoric two-foot gauge railroad equipment for the education and enjoyment of the public.
Public library
Lyme public hall & local history archives, inc. is an historical organization preserving the history of the town and its lifeways in addition to being a community center.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine and the most unlike its peers is First Amendment Museum At the Gannett House. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
418 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. 418 of the 485 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 MaineHealth ↗
- Who funds The Foundation for Maine's Community Colleges ↗
- Who funds Great Schools Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds Sweetser ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LifeFlight Foundation ↗
- Who funds AROOSTOOK MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Olympia Snowe Women's Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds University of New England ↗
- Who funds WOODFORDS FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Mercy Hospital Northern Light Mercy Hospital ↗
- Who funds LET'S GET READY INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Eastern Maine Medical Center Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Cen ↗
- Who funds THE HURRICANE ISLAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Mathematics & Science Alliance ↗
- Who funds THE CHALLENGER LEARNING CNTR OF ME ↗
- Who funds NORTH YARMOUTH ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE AROOSTOOK MEDICAL CENTER NORTHERN LIGHT AR GOULD HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds Children's Center Early Intervention & Family Support ↗
- Who funds GULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MORRISON CENTER ↗
- Who funds MID-COAST HEALTH NET INC ↗
- Who funds MILESTONE RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds MAINE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL MAINE HEALTHCARE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Saint Joseph's College Saint Joseph's College of Maine ↗
- Who funds The President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds St Mary's Regional Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Hospice of Southern Maine ↗
- Who funds AUGUSTA TEEN CENTER OF THE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB ↗
- Who funds Charles A Dean Memorial Hospital Northern Light CA Dean Hospital ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Maine ↗
- Who funds Portland Public Library ↗
- Who funds MOUNT DESERT ISLAND HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds WOOD ISLAND LIFE SAVING STATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Acadia Hospital Corp Northern Light Acadia Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE BLUE HILL MEMORIAL HOSPITAL NORTHERN LIGHT BLUE HILL HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds THE JACKSON LABORATORY ↗
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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Onion Foundation · Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation Inc · Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust · Fisher Charitable Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Libra Foundation · Simmons Foundation - PerkinsThompson · John T Gorman Foundation · Maine Humanities Council · Virginia Hodgkins Somers 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 Davis 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Society for the Preservation of New Engl — 2% of income from government
- Quinnipiac University — 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 Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Davis Family 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.