· Private foundation
Fels Family Foundation
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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 85% of FELS FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $55k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $227k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $376k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $500,000 |
| ALL SAINTS ACADEMY | $116,000 |
| UMASS MEMORIAL HEALTH | $100,000 |
| ST JOSEPH SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| UNITED WAY | $60,000 |
| OUR BRIGHT FUTURE INC | $40,700 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $25,000 |
| UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST | $21,000 |
| WEBSTER DUDLEY FOOD SHARE | $20,000 |
| ST ANDREW BOBOLA CHURCH | $16,300 |
| PASSION 4 PAWS | $16,000 |
| PARTNERS IN CHARITY | $15,000 |
| FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH | $12,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE GLADYS | $11,000 |
| COMMUNITY CAT CONNECTION | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $316k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 6%. 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.
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.
75 repeat relationships — 40 still active in FY2025, 35 since wound down; 6 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- NCNICHOLS COLLEGE5× · 2018–2024 · $305k · revenue +2%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches8× · 2018–2025 · $200k · revenue +9%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WEBSTER-DUDLEY INC6× · 2019–2025 · $182k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF CHESTER C CORLINone grant, 2018 · $202k
- CCCAT CONNECTION INCone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -56% · 58% of their budget
- HHHARRINGTON HOSPITALone grant, 2019 · $100k
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.
To promote humane treatment of animals, operate the animal shelter, and assist with the adoption of animals.
We focus on keeping pets with the people who love them. the organization has a cage-free adoption center for cats and kittens in brimfield, massachusetts. the organization also provides services and resources for local animals and…
Animal rescue organization dedicated to finding homes for animals at the animal shelter. we also provde vet care foster homes, and assistance with homing for special needs animals.
Purrs and Whiskers primary function is to find forever homes for cats and kittens that are abandoned, stray, owner turn in, injured/sick, and/or born in feral colonies after we have fully vetted them by spaying/neutering, vaccinating,…
Provides shelter, food, veterinary services and medicine for abandoned and stray cats. No cats are euthanized. All are placed in homes, foster homes or remain at the shelter.
Animal rescue league of new bedford, inc., d/b/a humane society & shelter-southcoast, provides services to reduce the number of homeless pets. the organization provides quarantine services to other rescue organizations bringing animals…
An animal rescue/adoption Agency. Rescued animals are from kill shelters or owner surrenders facing hardship then rehabbed/medical completed while in foster care then adopted into loving homes.
Pawsitively cats is a no-kill cat shelter in tucson for homeless cats that provides compassionate care until a loving permanent home can be found. pawsitively cats also promotes trap, neuter and release (tnr) for feral cats. pawsitively…
Animal rescue
We are a feline foster home based rescue organization providing rescue, rehoming, low-cost spay & neutur services, vaccinations, and farm colony management.
Animal Rescue
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Animal Shelter Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cat Connection 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 48 years old; the field is 18. 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 12% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 115 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 NICHOLS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WEBSTER-DUDLEY INC ↗
- Who funds OUR BRIGHT FUTURE INC ↗
- Who funds CAT CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER COUNTY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds WEBSTER DUDLEY FOOD SHARE INC ↗
- Who funds Passion 4 Paws Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CAT CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER OF HOPE 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: Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · Aaf Charitable Foundation · The Janet Malser Humanities Trust · Webster Five Foundation Inc · Hometown Bank Community Foundation Inc · John J and Elizabeth M Kunkel & Family Foundation Inc · Coghlin Family Foundation · George Wells Foundation Ui · United Way of South Central Massachusetts Inc · Tonna Charitable Trust · The Fletcher Foundation · The White Companies Charitable Trust
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 Fels 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.
- Life-Skills Inc — 91% of income from government
- Center of Hope Foundation Inc — 74% of income from government
- Tri-Valley Inc — 68% of income from government
- Worcester Natural History Society Inc — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Animal Shelter Inc — 1% of income from government
- Worcester County Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Nichols College — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Fels Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Fels 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.