· Private foundation
Esler Family 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
- Under $10k3 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $408k
- $250k+3 grants · $800k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tesseract Research Center | $300,000 |
| Mindful Philanthropy | $250,000 |
| Nativity School of Worcester Inc | $250,000 |
| Nova Southeastern University | $106,000 |
| Young Life | $97,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club Worcester | $55,000 |
| Rank the Vote | $50,000 |
| MA WOMEN OF COLOR COALITION | $50,000 |
| United Way of Central Massachusetts | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| YWCA Central Mass | $20,000 |
| C S Lewis Institute | $10,000 |
| Standing Stone Ministry | $7,500 |
| World Vision | $4,200 |
| Detec Together | $2,500 |
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 (FY21–22, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 6 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $620k 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
- SISTRONGMINDS INC3× · 2021–2023 · $730k · revenue +0%
- MPMINDFUL PHILANTHROPY INC2× · 2023–2024 · $335k · revenue +111%
Nova Southeastern University Inc2× · 2022–2024 · $211k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- VCVOTER CHOICE EDUCATION FUND INCone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue -86% · 41% of their budget
- WSWORCESTER STATE FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +111%
- LLLEGENDARY LEGACIES INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +33%
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.
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…
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…
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…
Wpi transforms lives, turns knowledge into action to confront global challenges, and revolutionizes stem through distinctive and inclusive education, projects and research. (http://www.wpi.edu/about/mission.html)
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Wbenc's mission is to fuel economic growth globally by identifying, certifying, and facilitating the development of women-owned businesses.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The mission of westminster college is to help students develop competencies, commitments, and characteristics which have distinguished human beings at their best. see continuation on schedule o.the liberal arts tradition is the foundation…
Our mission is to mobilize people, partnerships and resources to catalyze change that strengthens the communities served.
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.
To sponsor and conduct educational conferences, seminars, workshops and symposia for purposes of informing members and other interested parties on current research, legislation and practices in all phases of employee reward programs…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Blue Hill Observatory Science Center Inc. 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 24 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.
38 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. 38 of the 65 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 STRONGMINDS INC ↗
- Who funds ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR ALL INC ↗
- Who funds MINDFUL PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds TESSERACT RESEARCH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVITY SCHOOL OF WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds Nova Southeastern University Inc ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds GREATER WORCESTER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VOTER CHOICE EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds BABSON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER STATE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RANK THE VOTE INC ↗
- Who funds LEGENDARY LEGACIES INC ↗
- Who funds MEDICAL BENEVOLENCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WHITINSVILLE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WORLD VISION INC ↗
- Who funds NET OF COMPASSION CORP ↗
- Who funds CLEARWAY CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HARVEST PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Wilmington Area Rebuilding Ministry Inc ↗
- Who funds HAMMER AND CHISEL INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER REGIONAL STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOUBLE UP DRIVE INC ↗
- Who funds CS Lewis Institute ↗
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: Coghlin Services Fund · Ruth H & Warren a Ellsworth Foundation · Worcester Railers Hc Charitable Foundation Inc · The Fred Harris Daniels Foundation · The Fletcher Foundation · Fallon Community Health Plan Inc · Stoddard Charitable Trust · Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · The Hanover Insurance Group Foundation Inc · The George I Alden Trust · Webster Five 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 Esler Family 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.
- Blue Hill Observatory Science Center Inc — 59% of income from government
- Legendary Legacies Inc — 58% of income from government
- Community Harvest Project Inc — 18% of income from government
- Worcester State Foundation Inc — 3% of income from government
- Babson College — 3% of income from government
- Nova Southeastern University Inc — 2% of income from government
- Entrepreneurship for All Inc — 2% of income from government
- Boys and Girls Club of Worcester Inc — 2% of income from government
- Worcester Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% 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 Esler Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Esler Family 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.