· Private foundation
Erik & Dorrit Pfau Charitable Trust
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k12 grants · $258k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $207k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND | $51,750 |
| HEIFER INTERNATIONAL | $51,750 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $51,725 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $51,725 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $43,100 |
| AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL | $25,875 |
| COVENANT HOUSE - NEW YORK | $25,875 |
| FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS | $25,450 |
| XAVIER SOCIETY FOR THE BLIND | $17,300 |
| HOSPICE OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD | $17,250 |
| MARTHA'S VINEYARD HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENT | $17,250 |
| WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $17,250 |
| CARMEL OF THE HOLY FAMILY | $17,250 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA | $17,250 |
| GRACE CHURCH OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD | $17,250 |
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 (FY17–25, $81k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 12% 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.
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.
19 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 14 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, 15% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $396k 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
- PSPERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND7× · 2017–2025 · $74k · revenue +49%
- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC7× · 2017–2023 · $60k · revenue +38%
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND INC8× · 2017–2024 · $40k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- MDMACULAR DEGENERATION RESEARCHone grant, 2017 · $5k
WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +70%- SJST JUDE HOSPITALone grant, 2021 · $2k
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.
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY ("THE INFIRMARY") IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT TEACHING HOSPITAL CONDUCTING PATIENT CARE AND RESEARCH. THE INFIRMARY IS A TEACHING HOSPITAL OF HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL AND AN INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR RESEARCH.…
Mass general brigham incorporated is developing an integrated health care delivery system throughout the region that offers patients a continuum of coordinated, high-quality care.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
To further the conservation, improvement and restoration of human eyesight" (mrs. doheny - 1947).
MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR ASSOCIATES, INC. ("MEEA") IS A SPECIALTY PHYSICIAN GROUP PRACTICE. IT PROVIDES CARE FOR PATIENTS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY, INC. ("MEEI"), A RELATED ORGANIZATION. THE PRACTICE SPECIALIZES IN…
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide 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 mission of the institute is to translate basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and related developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. it is catalyzing a new…
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
To discover, develop and deliver safe, effective and affordable vaccines for global public health. its vision is developing countries free of suffering from infectious disease.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Inc and the most unlike its peers is Tisbury School Pto. 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 44 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.
22 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. 22 of the 43 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 PERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OF THE USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD INC DBA HOSPICE AND PALLIATIVE CARE OF MARTHA'S ↗
- Who funds XAVIER SOCIETY FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds ISLAND HOUSING TRUST CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds WGBH Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds TISBURY SCHOOL PTO ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Hebrew Senior Life Inc ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
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: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Erik & Dorrit Pfau Charitable Trust 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.
- Perkins School for the Blind — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Hospice of Martha's Vineyard Inc Dba Hospice and Palliative Care of Martha's — 5% of income from government
- Island Housing Trust Corporation — 1% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Hebrew Senior Life Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.
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How do I get to Erik & Dorrit Pfau Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Erik & Dorrit Pfau Charitable Trust 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.