· Public charity
Greater Boston Legal Services Inc
Greater boston legal services (gbls) is the primary provider of free civil (non-criminal) legal assistance to the almost 341,000 low-income persons living in metropolitan boston to help them secure some of the most basic necessities of life.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTH COASTAL COUNTIES LEGAL SERVICES INC | $196,000 |
| DE NOVO | $179,194 |
| HOMESTART INC | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $304k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +167% since the first grant, against +74% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 4 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
- DNDE NOVO CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HEALING8× · 2017–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +206%
- HIHARBORCOV INC3× · 2021–2024 · $174k · revenue +28%
ASIAN AMERICAN RESOURCE WORKSHOP INC2× · 2023–2024 · $88k · revenue +167%
Funded once
- TNTHE NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPERS INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $350k · revenue +39%
- MCMISSISSIPPI CENTER FOR JUSTICEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +28%
- MLMETROWEST LEGAL SERVICES INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $86k · revenue +197%
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.
Metro housing boston mobilizes wide-ranging resources to provide innovative and personalized services that lead families and individuals to housing stability, economic security, and an improved quality of life.
Mfhc is committed to ending systemic housing discrimination and creating inclusive communities through education, outreach, advocacy, housing counseling and enforcement.
The legal aid justice center partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty.
Maha breaks down barriers facing first-time and first-generation home buyers and owners through education, counseling, advocacy, and grassroots organizing.
The mission of the volunteer lawyers project of the boston bar association is to increase access to justice by delivering high quality pro bono civil legal services to eligible clients in the greater boston area.
In 2024, Inner City Law Center, ICLC, served over 3,400 people, helping vulnerable Angelenos to remain in their homes and recover nearly $20.5 million in financial benefits.
The massachusetts legal assistance corporation provides leadership and support to improve civil legal services to low-income people in massachusetts through collaboration with the legal services community, the legislature, the public, the…
The organization's mission is to provide management and supporting services for related organizations which own and operate low-income housing units for qualified individuals in the city of cambridge, ma.
To collectively work with partners to statbilize neighborhoods by providing innovative means by which as many residents of foreclosed occupied homes as soon as possible can stay in (continued - see sch o)
Neighborhealth's mission is to promote and sustain healthy communities, families, and individuals by providing accessible, person-centered, and compassionate, high-quality health care services to all who live and work in our service area,…
The corporation is organized to improve the quality of life in bostons urban communities by building capacity, environmental health, and providing economic opportunity in a manner that responds directly to community needs, interests, and…
Legal services nyc is a non-profit organization that provides free civil legal assistance to low-income people in new york city. a community-based organization serving more than 100,000 people annually, lsnyc is the nation's largest…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is De Novo Center for Justice and Healing and the most unlike its peers is The Neighborhood Developers Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 14 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 DE NOVO CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HEALING ↗
- Who funds THE NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPERS INC ↗
- Who funds HomeStart Inc ↗
- Who funds HARBORCOV INC ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI CENTER FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN RESOURCE WORKSHOP INC ↗
- Who funds METROWEST LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN REVIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON PUBLIC HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CHINATOWN NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LA COLABORATIVA 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: Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Massachusetts Bar Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Boston Bar Foundation · Herman and Frieda L Miller Foundation · George H & Jane a Mifflin Memorial Fund · Wagner Foundation · The Clowes Fund Incorporated · Mass General Brigham Incorporated & Affiliates Group Return
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 Greater Boston Legal Services 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.
- Harborcov Inc — 76% of income from government
- Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center Inc — 38% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- HomeStart Inc — 20% of income from government
- Metrowest Legal Services Inc — 10% of income from government
- De Novo Center for Justice and Healing — 9% of income from government
- Community Legal Aid Inc — 5% of income from government
- The Neighborhood Developers Inc — 3% of income from government
- Asian American Resource Workshop 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.