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Evelyn S Emerson Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

Evelyn S Emerson Trust

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$42k
Granted FY2024still arriving
8
Grants FY2024still arriving
2
States reached
$33k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
0199% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Education$49kPublic Safety & Disaster$48kHousing & Shelter$48kHuman Services$47kRecreation & Sports$36kArts & Culture$33kCommunity Improvement$32kHealth$10kOther$0
02FY2024 · 8 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k7 grants · $8k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $33k
$1,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$724k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Individual grant recipient$33,321
MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT$2,500
MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE$1,350
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY$1,000
ITHACA COLLEGE$1,000
SUNY GENESEO$1,000
HARTWICK COLLEGE$1,000
OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL$500
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 0% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 15%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $27k → 12%DELHI COLLEGE: $2k → 15%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $10k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $8k → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY MIDDLE SCHOOL: $3k → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $3k → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $750 → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $500 → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $500 → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $500 → 12%OXFORD ACADEMY SCHOOL: $500 → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $33k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $25k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH: $19k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $17k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH REC COMM: $15k → 12%AMERICAN LEGION POST #1478: $15k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $14k → 12%AMERICAN LEGION POST #1478: $13k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $10k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $8k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $6k → 12%AMERICAN LEGION POST #1478: $6k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH REC COMM: $6k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $5k → 12%TOWN OF MCDONOUGH REC COMM: $4k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE: $4k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $4k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $3k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $3k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $3k → 12%MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $2k → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE: $1k → 12%MCDONOUGH ECUMENICAL FOOD PANTRY: $1k → 12%MCDONOUGH UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: $900 → 12%MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITEE: $300 → 12%HOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY: $3k → 12%HOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY: $3k → 12%HOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY: $3k → 12%HOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY: $2k → 12%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

96%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$314k · 19 repeat orgs$12k to everyone else

19 repeat relationships: 6 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

19
8

Total granted

$314k
$10k

Still filing today

21%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    6× · 2017–2024 · $122k
  • MV
    MCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT
    6× · 2017–2024 · $48k
  • AL
    AMERICAN LEGION POST #1478
    3× · 2017–2022 · $34k

Funded once

  • OA
    OXFORD ACADEMY MIDDLE SCHOOL
    one grant, 2017 · $3k
  • SB
    SUNY BINGHAMTON
    one grant, 2017 · $1k
  • SC
    SUNY CORTLAND
    one grant, 2017 · $1k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 29 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
3/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Individual grant recipient: $122,206 · OtherIndividual grant recipientMCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT: $48,285 · OtherMCDONOUGH VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPTAMERICAN LEGION POST #1478: $34,448 · OtherAMERICAN LEGION POST #1478MCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE INC: $32,159 · OtherMCDONOUGH IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE INCTOWN OF MCDONOUGH REC COMM: $25,350 · OtherTOWN OF MCDONOUGH REC COMM+19 more: $51,650 · Other+19 moreRochester Institute of Technology: $4,000 · EducationHartwick College: $3,000 · EducationEMERSON COLLEGE: $3,000 · EducationST LOUIS UNIVERSITY: $1,000 · EducationITHACA COLLEGE: $1,000 · Education
Other$314,098Education$12,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetHOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY INC: $10,000 over 4y, 0.2% of budgetRochester Institute of Technology: $4,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetHartwick College: $3,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetEMERSON COLLEGE: $3,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetST LOUIS UNIVERSITY: $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetITHACA COLLEGE: $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds HOSPICE OF CHENANGO COUNTY INC ↗
  • Who funds Rochester Institute of Technology ↗
  • Who funds Hartwick College ↗
  • Who funds EMERSON COLLEGE ↗
  • Who funds ST LOUIS UNIVERSITY ↗
  • Who funds ITHACA COLLEGE ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Evelyn S Emerson Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Evelyn S Emerson Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →median 0%
  • Emerson College: 0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
typical government reliance, FY20–25
How this is measured
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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 29 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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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 endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home