· Private foundation
Elfers Foundation Inc
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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $115k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $190k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Hotchkiss School | $300,000 |
| The Fessenden School | $190,000 |
| Brooks School | $25,000 |
| Woodwell Climate Research Center | $20,000 |
| LISTEN Community Services | $10,000 |
| Prostate Cancer Foundation | $10,000 |
| Trinity Church | $10,000 |
| Maine Island Trail Association | $10,000 |
| Old Dartmouth Historical Society | $10,000 |
| The Nature Conservancy | $10,000 |
| Boston Athenaeum | $10,000 |
| Holy Trinity Lutheran Church | $5,000 |
| The Main Place | $5,000 |
| Hope Dealer Community | $5,000 |
| Sea Change Yoga | $5,000 |
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 (FY25–25, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 75% 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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $90k 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
- TFTHE FESSENDEN SCHOOL6× · 2020–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +45%
- THTHE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL6× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +57%
- NENEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC2× · 2020–2022 · $497k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- PHPartners Healthcare Systems Inc (Newton-Wellesley Hospital)one grant, 2020 · $75k
- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +27%
- WHWALNUT HILL CENTER FOR THE ARTS INCone grant, 2024 · $20k · revenue +3%
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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 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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
Education and Research
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.…
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Walnut Hill Center for the Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Winsor School. 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 42 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) — 3% 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 41 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 THE FESSENDEN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds DANA HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Portland Community Squash ↗
- Who funds WALNUT HILL CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds PROPRIETORS OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM ↗
- Who funds 317 Main St Community Center Inc ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE WINSOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Old Dartmouth Historical Society ↗
- Who funds LISTEN Lebanon in Service to Each Neighbor ↗
- Who funds Maine Island Trail Association ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEA CHANGE YOGA ↗
- Who funds REFUGE INC ↗
- Who funds JOSLIN DIABETES CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds VERO BEACH MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds THE MAIN PLACE ↗
- Who funds Hope Dealer Community Inc ↗
- Who funds ALCOHOL AND DRUG FREEDOM CENTER OF KNOX COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL ST VINCENT DE PAUL CENTER ↗
- Who funds OUR SISTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SIPPICAN LANDS TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds ALMA DEL MAR FOUNDATION 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 · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Fidelity Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Elfers Foundation Inc 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.
- Joslin Diabetes Center Inc — 35% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Old Dartmouth Historical Society — 2% of income from government
- New England Conservatory of Music — 1% of income from government
- Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum — 0% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Our Sisters School — 0% of income from government
- The Fessenden School — 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.