· Private foundation
Edith H Overly Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k17 grants · $507k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Trustees of Tufts College | $180,000 |
| Museum of Science | $125,000 |
| Old Sturbridge Village | $105,000 |
| New England Aquarium | $95,000 |
| American Alpine Club | $80,000 |
| Unity Farm Sanctuary | $73,739 |
| American Cancer Society | $70,000 |
| Mass Eye & Ear Infirmary | $60,000 |
| Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital | $60,000 |
| WGBH Educational Foundation | $60,000 |
| New England Wildlife Center | $50,000 |
| World Wildlife Fund | $50,000 |
| Robert Treat Paine Historical Trust | $50,000 |
| Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | $50,000 |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Center | $50,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 87% of your 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.
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 5% of Edith H Overly 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2024, 1 since wound down; 2 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $99k 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
Trustees of Tufts College5× · 2020–2024 · $860k · revenue +39%- TATHE AMERICAN ALPINE CLUB5× · 2020–2024 · $420k · revenue +87%
- MOMUSEUM OF SCIENCE5× · 2020–2024 · $329k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- UFUNITY FARM SANCTUARYone grant, 2024 · $74k · revenue 0%
MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INCone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue -24%
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
The mission of lowell observatory is to pursue the study of astronomy, especially the study of our solar system and its evolution; to conduct pure research in astronomical phenomena; and to maintain quality public education and outreach…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To promote understanding of the history of massachusetts and the nation by collecting and communicating materials and resources that foster historical knowledge.
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…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Trustees of Reservations and the most unlike its peers is Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc. 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 64 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 35 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 Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN ALPINE CLUB ↗
- Who funds Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds WGBH Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds CAROLINA HORSE PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ROBERT TREAT PAINE HISTORICAL TRUST ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SUDBURY VALLEY TRUSTEES INC ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds OLD STURBRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds PROPRIETORS OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CARITAS COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE WALTHOUR - MOSS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE WINSOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SHADY HILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Appalachian Mountain Club ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND WILDLIFE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds New England Equine Rescue - North Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITY FARM SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds LOVELANE SPECIAL NEEDS HORSEBACK RIDING PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY 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: Boston Foundation Inc · Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund Trust · Fiduciary Charitable Foundation Dba Fiduciary Trust Charitable · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Fidelity Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · American Online Giving 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 Edith H Overly 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Sudbury Valley Trustees Inc — 11% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Old Sturbridge Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- New England Wildlife Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum — 0% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Science — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Fine Arts — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation 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 Edith H Overly Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Edith H Overly 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.