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Foundation Dossiers

Massachusetts · Private foundation

Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation

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.

$15k
Granted FY2020
1
Grants FY2020
1
Organizations funded FY2020
0%
First-time grantees FY2020
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2020
$14,500
Largest grant, FY2020
$14,500
Organizations funded a year
1 to 16
FY2017 to FY2020
States reached, FY2020
1
Total assets, FY2020
$725k
Applications
Preselected organizations only
Per its most recent filing; check its own site

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2020, 0% of the organizations Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2020, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20201$15k0%
FY20193$180k0%
FY20185$154k20%
FY201716$172kn/a
88% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2020.

Arts & Culture$451kReligion$56kCivil Rights$8kEducation$3kHealth$190Environment$100Human Services$100Other$0

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2020, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Newton Cultural Alliance Inc$450,000335%
First Unitarian Society in Newton$55,7504n/a
Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian Churches$8,00020%
Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum$33610%
Peabody Essex Museum Inc$21010%
Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc$19010%
Trustees of Boston University$13510%
Society for the Preservation of New Engl$10010%
Green Newton Inc$10010%
The Trustees of the Smith College$10010%

Plus 7 recipients with no EIN on record ($6k), not named here.

Where it is load-bearing

Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation supplied at least a quarter of the budget for 1 of its grantees at some point. The chart plots its 9 largest grantees; load-bearing ones sit top left.

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetNewton Cultural Alliance Inc: $450,000 over 3y, 35% of budgetBenevolent Fraternity of Unitarian Churches: $8,000 over 2y, 0.4% of budgetProprietors of the Boston Athenaeum: $336 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPeabody Essex Museum Inc: $210 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc: $190 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTrustees of Boston University: $135 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetSociety for the Preservation of New Engl: $100 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetGreen Newton Inc: $100 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetThe Trustees of the Smith College: $100 over 1y, 0.0% of budget

Tap a dot to name the grantee.

How this is measured
Share of budget is the funder’s grant in a year over the grantee’s total revenue that year, at its highest across the years we hold; revenue is from all sources. Only grantees confirmed against their own filings, whose grants do not exceed their revenue, are plotted: the largest 9.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Vanguard Charitable E…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Vanguard Charitable Endowment ProgramPA9.4× affinity4 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Compare Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation with peer funders

About Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation

How much does Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation give?
Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation reported 1 grants totaling $14,500 in its FY2020 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 16 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2020.
What does Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2020, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (87%), Religion (11%), Civil Rights (2%).
Who are Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2020: Newton Cultural Alliance Inc ($450k), First Unitarian Society in Newton ($56k), Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian Churches ($8k).
Does Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2020, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Does Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation accept unsolicited applications?
Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Which funders back the same organizations as Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund.
Where is Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation based?
Downey-Farnsworth Family Charitable Foundation is based in MA.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 17 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2020, the most recent year this funder made grants.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Downey-Farnsworth Family’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home