· Private foundation
Frank and Brinna Sands 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
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $56k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $35k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Upper Valley Agricultural Association | $25,000 |
| Village Health Works | $10,000 |
| Dartmouth College | $5,800 |
| Darmouth-Hitchcock Health | $5,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Upper Valley Trails Alliance | $5,000 |
| Upper Valley Haven | $5,000 |
| Wildlands Network | $5,000 |
| Vermont Public | $5,000 |
| Middlebury College | $4,000 |
| Mountain Lake PBS | $3,500 |
| University of Vermont Foundation | $2,500 |
| Upper Valley Music Center | $2,500 |
| Maynard House | $1,500 |
| Vermont Institute of Natural Science | $1,000 |
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, $26k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 84% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Frank and Brinna Sands Foundation’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, 81% of the giving stays in VT; read by stated purpose it is 72% — 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.
51 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 35 since wound down; 7 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, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $44k 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
- VHVILLAGE HEALTH WORKS6× · 2017–2025 · $105k · revenue +10%
- TATHETFORD ACADEMY5× · 2017–2021 · $105k · revenue +20%
- UVUPPER VALLEY HAVEN7× · 2018–2025 · $55k · revenue +72%
Funded once
- SRSTUDENT RESCUE PROJECT INCone grant, 2019 · $25k
- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INCone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +23%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $9k · revenue +110%
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.
Protect land along rivers, lakes and wetlands of vt; protect public access, wildlife habitat, scenic natural beauty, and ecological integrity.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Vermont electric cooperative is a member owned not-for-profit whose mission is to provide safe, affordable, and reliable energy services to its members.
The Organization works with local landowners to permanently protect natural land and waters that define its community and enrich the quality of life by purchasing, managing, negotiating and developing conservations easements in the Upper…
Veic is a sustainable energy company on a mission to generate the energy solutions the world needs (continues in schedule o). (continued), working to combat the climate crisis, boost community resilience, and lower energy costs. for nearly…
The vermont community foundation helps to build philanthropic resources to sustain healthy and vital vermont communities. the foundation connects and mobilizes people through giving to multiply the impact of philanthropy.
Serve as the governing organization for physicians who are employed to provide clinical services to affiliated member hospitals (the "affiliated hospitals") of the university of vermont health network ("uvm health network").
Cvph medical center's mission is to provide quality health care for the north country region in upstate new york.
The vermont center for ecostudies advances the conservation of wildlife across the americas through research, monitoring, and citizen engagement.
To preserve and protect land surrounding the appalachian trail in maine for public benefit.
Sudbury valley trustees, inc. ("the organization") works to protect natural areas and farmland for wildlife and people in the 36 communities that surround the sudbury, assabet, and concord rivers. the organization cares for some of the…
Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Vermont Natural Resources Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is CraftStudies 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 36 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
75 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. 75 of the 103 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 VILLAGE HEALTH WORKS ↗
- Who funds THETFORD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Vermont Public Radio ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY HAVEN ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY TRAILS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY MUSIC CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Upper Valley Agricultural Association Inc ↗
- Who funds VERMONT FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds NEW HAMPSHIRE PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT INSTITUTE OF NATURAL SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds WILLING HANDS ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Wild Earth Society Incorporated ↗
- Who funds MOUNTAIN LAKE PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Northern Forest Center Inc ↗
- Who funds VERMONT JOURNALISM TRUST LTD ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT PUBLIC CO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MONTSHIRE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETY 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: The Vermont Community Foundation · New Hampshire Charitable Foundation · The Couch Family Foundation · Mascoma Bank Foundation · Emily Landecker Foundation Inc · Hypertherm Hope Foundation Inc · Claremont Savings Bank Foundation · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · Lane & Elizabeth C Dwinell Fdn · The Help for People Foundation · The Stannard & Dorothy Dunn Charitable Trust · Lintilhac Foundation Inc
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 Frank and Brinna Sands 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Safeline Inc — 64% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc — 42% of income from government
- The Family Place Inc — 38% of income from government
- Upper Valley Haven — 38% of income from government
- Vermont Natural Resources Council Inc — 30% of income from government
- Vermont Woodlands Association — 21% of income from government
- Willing Hands Enterprises Inc — 17% of income from government
- Vermont Law School — 14% of income from government
- Vermont Foodbank — 13% of income from government
- Sterling College — 10% of income from government
- Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium — 7% of income from government
- Hubbard Brook Research Foundation — 6% of income from government
- Northern Stage Company — 5% of income from government
- Montshire Museum of Science Inc — 4% of income from government
- Upper Valley Trails Alliance — 3% of income from government
- Cover Home Repair Inc — 3% of income from government
- Thetford Academy — 2% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Vermont Public Co — 0% of income from government
- Vermont Journalism Trust Ltd — 0% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Vermont Institute of Natural Science 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 Frank and Brinna Sands Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Frank and Brinna Sands 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.