· Public charity
First Literacy Inc
Funding innovation in adult literacy to change lives.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 1 grants below total $11,125 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $75,044 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $63,919 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE LITERACY PROJECT | $11,125 |
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 (FY17–19, $28k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 82% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of First Literacy Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 83% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +154% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MUMUJERES UNIDAS AVANZANDO INC5× · 2017–2023 · $30k · revenue +158%
- BPBOSTON PUBLIC HOUSING CORPORATION3× · 2017–2024 · $25k · revenue +526%
ASIAN TASK FORCE AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC3× · 2017–2019 · $20k · revenue +114%
Funded once
- SCSOMERVILLE CENTER FOR ADULT LEARNING EXPERIENCESone grant, 2017 · $5k
- BHBROOKLINE HOUSING AUTHORITYone grant, 2019 · $5k
- JPJAMAICA PLAIN COMMUNITY CENTERS INCone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +8%
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.
Aaca's mission is to empower low-income individuals and families by providing education, guidance, resources, and support. our goal is to help them achieve economic stability and mobility, enabling them to build wealth and secure a strong…
Community center providing educational, cultural, social, recreational, and community services to individuals and families in the allston-brighton neighborhood of boston, massachusetts.
The Indo-American Center creates and provides services that facilitate South Asian immigrant adjustment, socio-economic wellbeing, and community through direct service, education and advocacy.
Neighborhood based organization that promotes the advancement of immigrants of all ages through education, services, advocacy, community organizing, and leadership development.
To promote the general welfare and independence of asian elders via a network of culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate programs and services.
Literacy training skills to enable learners to attain self-sufficiency and become fully engaged in the commumity.
Immigration services are performed by bic's caseworkers who are u.s. department of justice partially accredited representatives. our immigration legal services further charitable and educational exempt purposes by providing low-cost legal…
development of Latin American community
To promote public awareness of chinese culture and heritage. to enhance the well-being and social standing of chinese americans. to provide an environment for people to learn chinese culture, language and arts.
Necp believes that social change happens when those most impacted by issues of systemic injustice, organize at the block level to address issues within their neighborhoods. through their involvement at a community level, residents engage…
To provide a supportive educational environment for adult learners from the greater lynn area, provide opportunities for non-native english speakers to learn english and improve their english language arts and math skills, and to…
The Multicultural Institute (MI) is dedicated to assist immigrants in their transition from isolation and poverty to workforce participation and prosperity. Programs are offered at three locations in Alameda County (West Berkeley), San…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Quincy Asian Resources Inc and the most unlike its peers is Blackstone Community Center Council Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 21 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 MUJERES UNIDAS AVANZANDO INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON PUBLIC HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ASIAN TASK FORCE AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE LITERACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH MIDDLESEX OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CHINATOWN NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE WELCOME PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds JAMAICA PLAIN COMMUNITY CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds GILBERT ALBERT COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR NEW AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds QUINCY ASIAN RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITABLE BUREAU OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds ST MARK COMMUNITY EDUCATION PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BLACKSTONE COMMUNITY CENTER COUNCIL 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: Eastern Bank Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · English for New Bostonians Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Rockland Trust - Blue Hills Charitable Foundation · The Beveridge Family Foundation · Peoples United Community Foundation · Agnes M Lindsay Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Literacy Inc 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.
- Center for New Americans Inc — 45% of income from government
- Mujeres Unidas Avanzando Inc — 44% of income from government
- Quincy Asian Resources Inc — 43% of income from government
- Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center Inc — 38% of income from government
- Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence Inc — 32% of income from government
- International Institute of New England Inc — 24% of income from government
- South Middlesex Opportunity Council Inc — 18% of income from government
- North Shore Community Action Programs Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Welcome Project Inc — 4% 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 Literacy Inc?
Find your warmest path to First Literacy Inc 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.