· Public charity
First Children's Finance Group
FIRST CHILDREN'S FINANCE GROUP (fcf) grows the supply and sustainability of high-quality child care by strengthening the business and financial foundations of the sector.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 69 grants below total $1,501,961 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,105,762 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $603,801 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $149k
- $10k–50k45 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k4 grants · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ONE ARTS INC | $96,000 |
| OTTER CREEK CHILD CENTER INC | $54,000 |
| MATER CHRISTI SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| PLANETARY ART INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| CURIOUS KIDS CHILDCARE LLC | $48,046 |
| EJ'S KIDS KLUB INC | $45,000 |
| VIP ROOTS CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER | $45,000 |
| THE GROWING TREE LLC | $45,000 |
| RIVER BRANCH | $40,298 |
| RAINBOW GARDENS | $39,421 |
| TURTLE ISLAND | $36,056 |
| IMMERSION MONTESSORI SCHOOL LLC | $36,000 |
| MYERS PROUTY CHILDREN'S CAMPUSES INC | $36,000 |
| OVERLAKE DAY SCHOOL (DBA THE CHILDREN'S SCHOOL) | $35,271 |
| EDGAR MAY | $34,210 |
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 (FY25–25, $194k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 69% 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.
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.
Robins Nest Childrens Center provides high-quality early care and education in a play-based setting.
Mountain Tots preschool provides high quality early learning enrichment programs that enhances educational, social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development as well as Kindergarten-readiness. We provide preschool and childcare…
To educate children
The general philosophy of Northpoint Cooperative Preschool is that we all learn together - adults and children alike. Guided by our qualified, caring, and endlessly imaginative teachers, co-op parents create an environment of learning and…
Woodside Nursery School is a cooperative preschool dedicated to providing a nurturing, play-based learning environment that fosters social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development in young children. Our mission is to cultivate…
Northeast kingdom preschool and childcare provides safe, affordable, high-quality early childhood education and care for the lyndonville, vt and surrounding communities. families are encouraged to be ambassadors of the program in support…
Monarch Preschool offers a unique play-based learning experience for your child. Play-based, child-led education supports social and emotional development, strengthens language and numeracy skills, and inspires a life-long love of learning.
Daycare services
Little Beginnings provides pre kindergarten and day care to children under 6 years of age. We believe that learning and playing are synonymous for the preschool age child. Young children learn best when they have an opportunity to practice…
A PreK childcare center and KG-Grade 8 school that values each students unique learning experience, fostering academic excellence, emotional intelligence, and social and environmental justice through five core concepts trust, sharing,…
Sandy hook child care center is a fully licensed, parent run, nonprofit, certified nature child care center and preschool run from the historic fort hancock in gateway national park
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Turtle Island Children's Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Planetary Art Institute 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 33 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 15% of your grantees by number, and just 20% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 66 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 ONE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Otter Creek Child Center Inc ↗
- Who funds PB&J Inc DBA River Branch Community School ↗
- Who funds WHOLE CHILD LEARNING CO ↗
- Who funds TURTLE ISLAND CHILDREN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MYERS PROUTY CHILDREN'S CAMPUSES INC ↗
- Who funds Overlake Day School Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN VERMONT HEALTH AND RECREATION CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds STARKSBORO COOP PRESCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BERKSHIRE FAMILY YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds NECK OF THE WOODS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOR WOODSTOCK ↗
- Who funds Mary Johnson Children's Center Inc ↗
- Who funds WINDSOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN HOMESTEAD INC ↗
- Who funds Rutland County Parent Child Center Inc ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLHOUSE OF BRATTLEBORO INC ↗
- Who funds VALLEY HUB 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: Let's Grow Kids Inc · Building Bright Futures State Advisory Council · First Children's Finance · Vermont Afterschool Inc · The Vermont Community Foundation · Vt Association for the Education of Young Children · Vermont Childrens Trust Foundation · Seventh Generation Foundation Inc · The Couch Family Foundation · Turrell Fund · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 First Children's Finance Group 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.
- Arlington Area Childcare Inc — 78% of income from government
- Myers Prouty Children's Campuses Inc — 78% of income from government
- Puffer Child Care Center Inc — 61% of income from government
- Mary Johnson Children's Center Inc — 54% of income from government
- Rutland County Parent Child Center Inc — 50% of income from government
- One Arts Inc — 48% of income from government
- Craftsbury Saplings Inc — 40% of income from government
- Otter Creek Child Center Inc — 32% of income from government
- Starksboro Coop Preschool Inc — 30% of income from government
- Neck of the Woods Inc — 26% of income from government
- Turtle Island Children's Center Inc — 25% of income from government
- Overlake Day School Inc — 20% of income from government
- Hilltop Montessori School Inc — 5% of income from government
- Southwestern Vermont Medical Center — 1% of income from government
- Common Roots 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to First Children's Finance Group?
Find your warmest path to First Children's Finance Group 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.