· Private foundation
Fernwood 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k13 grants · $24k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $151k
- $250k+1 grant · $625k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA | $625,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $101,000 |
| WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | $50,250 |
| TOWN OF WESTON CONNECTICUT | $8,200 |
| TOWN OF WESTON CONNECTICUT | $2,500 |
| MARTHA GRAHAM CENTER OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| 211 PALM BEACH AND TREASURE COAST | $2,000 |
| BROTHER WOLF ANIMAL RESCUE | $1,000 |
| BEST FRIENDS FOR LIFE ANIMAL RESCUE | $1,000 |
| BE LOVED ASHEVILLE | $1,000 |
| THE GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK | $1,000 |
| ASPETUCK LAND TRUST | $1,000 |
| FRIENDS OF LACHAT | $500 |
| THE DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE | $350 |
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 (FY17–22, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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 +20% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 7 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $108k 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
- FOFRIENDS OF LACHAT INC7× · 2017–2024 · $16k · revenue +218%
- ALASPETUCK LAND TRUST5× · 2017–2024 · $14k · revenue +57%
Feeding America2× · 2020–2021 · $13k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- DHDanbury Hospital & New Milford Hospital Foundation Incone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue -18%
- BCBROADWAY CARESEQUITY FIGHTS AIDS INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +2%
CITY HARVEST INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +3%
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.
Driven by the belief that access to healthy food is a basic right for all people, feeding westchester leads hunger action programs and mobilizes the resources needed to eradicate hunger in westchester county.
To pursue anti-hunger initiatives through the west side campaign against hunger (wscah) program whose mission is to alleviate hunger by ensuring that all new yorkers have access with dignity to a choice of healthy food and supportive…
The mission of feeding new york state is to lead a unified effort for a hunger-free state of new york. the mission of food banking is to obtain food and deliver it to emergency food programs. feeding new york state works to end hunger by…
Foodshare is leading an informed, coordinated response to hunger as part of the overall community effort to alleviate poverty in hartford and tolland counties.
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
To gather and share quality food and nurture partnerships so that no one in vermont will go hungry.
Waste Not cultivates sustainable food systems that help people and the planet flourish. We do this by eliminating food waste and hunger through innovative community partnerships.
The mission of island harvest is to end hunger and reduce food waste on long island.
The food bank's mission is to provide nutritious food to non-profit organizations that feed the hungry in darien, greenwich, new canaan, norwalk, stamford and wilton ct., while seeking to raise awareness of, and promote action to combat,…
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Action Against Hunger - Usa and the most unlike its peers is Best Friends for Life Animal Rescue 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 40 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
52 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. 52 of the 64 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 The American Classical Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds WESTON COMMUNITY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Norwalk Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds Weston Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LACHAT INC ↗
- Who funds Danbury Hospital & New Milford Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ASPETUCK LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds WESTON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds BROADWAY CARESEQUITY FIGHTS AIDS INC ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT FOODSHARE INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Philabundance ↗
- Who funds EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY SUPPORT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds DIG DEEP ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK CITY ↗
- Who funds PRO BONO NET INC ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds WESTON WARM-UP FUND INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ON THE HILL INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF ORANGE AND SULLIVAN COUNTIES INC ↗
- Who funds The Alcohol and Drug Awareness Program of Weston 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: Mutual of America Foundation · Sherlock Family Foundation · The Daniel E Offutt III Charitable Trust · The Shack Sackler Foundation · Sherlock Charitable Foundation · Kurtz Family Foundation Trust · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · Morton and Helen Yulman Charitable Trust · Donna and Stuart Farber Family Foundation Inc · Howard & Katherine Aibel Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · The Ayco Charitable 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 Fernwood 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.
- Aspetuck Land Trust — 28% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Connecticut Legal Services Inc — 18% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Connecticut Foodshare Inc — 5% of income from government
- Music On the Hill Inc — 3% of income from government
- Westport Country Playhouse Inc — 2% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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.