How much did Ellice & Rosa McDonald Foundation grant in FY2024?

Education$3.8MHuman Services$2.2MEnvironment$1.7MArts & Culture$1.6MHousing & Shelter$989kRecreation & Sports$950kAnimals$760kYouth Development$597kOther$0

02FY2024 · 45 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k4 grants · $20k
$10k–50k21 grants · $513k
$50k–250k20 grants · $1.4M

$31,200

Median grant

States reached

$26M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Delaware Hospice	$125,000
Urban Promise	$100,000
Delaware Botanical Gardens	$100,000
First State Squash	$100,000
Delaware College Scholars	$75,000
Stratford Hall Historic Preserve	$75,000
The Ministry of Caring Inc	$75,000
Delaware Theater Company	$75,000
Aspira Academy	$75,000
The Delaware Kids Fund	$60,000
Delaware Museum of Natural History	$54,500
Tower Hill School	$52,500
West End Neighborhood House	$51,498
Community Education Building	$50,000
Habitat for Humanity	$50,000

02The need

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 (FY18–24, $680k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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

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.

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.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$12M · 52 repeat orgs$1.3M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +50% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.

52 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$12M

$925k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+50%

+22%

Still filing today

54%

53%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $412k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EducationHuman ServicesYouth DevelopmentArts & CultureAnimalsPhilanthropyOther

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

FF
FAITHFUL FRIENDS INC
8× · 2017–2024 · $700k · revenue +113%
FS
First State Squash Inc
8× · 2017–2024 · $575k · revenue +126% · 33% of their budget
DW
DELAWARE WILD LANDS INC
6× · 2017–2024 · $515k · revenue +1%

Funded once

TB
The Beaver Valley Conservatin Fund
one grant, 2017 · $250k
YD
YWCA DELAWARE INCgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $115k · revenue +32%
ES
Easter Seals DEEastern Shore
one grant, 2023 · $75k

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.

Early College School At Delaware State University

To provide highly motivated students with a curriculum that is integrated with the relevant curriculum at delaware state university such that all students graduate with one to two years of college credits, preparing them for completion of…

Education

First State Montessori Academy

The mission of the first state montessori academy is to create successful, contributing, life-long learners in a montessori public educational program for students in kindergarten through 8th grade.

Education

Charter School of New Castle

A delaware charter school with a mission that acknowledges the learning differences of each individual child and nurtures the uniqueness of each family structure.

Education

Catholic Scholars of De

Unclassified

Delaware State University

Delaware state university is a public, comprehensive, 1890 land-grant institution that offers access and opportunity to diverse populations from delaware, the nation, and the world. (continued on schedule o.)building on its heritage as a…

Education

Delaware Valley University

See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…

—

Delaware Agricultural Museum Association

The organization's mission is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret the history and technology of delaware and the delmarva peninsula's farm life/culture and to offer public education programs and services related to aspects of the…

—

Delaware State Education Association Inc

Advocate for the rights and interests of its members and outstanding public education for all students.

—

Positive Outcomes Charter School

State of delaware chartered school. the school's mission is to provide opportunity for students at risk to learn in a safe, caring, and respectful environment, where individuality is valued and individual needs are addressed.

Education

Delaware Center for Justice

The delaware center for justice, inc. seeks to ensure an effective, efficient, and equitable system of justice in delaware through advocacy, direct services, research and public education.

Crime & Legal

United Way of Delaware

The organization's mission is to maximize the community's resources to improve the quality of lives of all delawareans.

Philanthropy

Delaware Prosperity Partnership Inc

To lead the state of delaware's economic development efforts.

Community Improvement

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ywca Delaware Inc and the most unlike its peers is Salem County Humane Society. 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 43 years old; the field is 10. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 31% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.0%0/46

the rest of the field

10%

655/6,585

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.

04the grantee network

44 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. 44 of the 79 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

43/44

Grantees still filing

33/44

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$9,016,631Education$1,717,250Youth Development$895,000Animals$725,000Arts & Culture$583,759Human Services$555,112Food & Nutrition$450,000

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.

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.

Delaware Community Foundation IncDE70.2× affinity33 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Delaware Community Foundation Inc · Longwood Foundation Inc · Crestlea Foundation Inc · Laffey-McHugh Foundation · Welfare Foundation Inc · Chichester Dupont Foundation Inc · Marmot Foundation · Wsfs Cares Foundation · United Way of Delaware · Incyte Charitable Giving Foundation · Nor' Easter Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation

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 Ellice & Rosa McDonald 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

4get no government money at all

5report 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, FY20–25

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 Ellice & Rosa McDonald Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Ellice & Rosa McDonald 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.

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 camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines