· Private foundation
Harold Alfond Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k8 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $218k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $277k
- $250k+23 grants · $102M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MAINE FOUNDATION | $28,000,000 |
| MAINEGENERAL HEALTH | $14,535,638 |
| NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | $12,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MAINE SYSTEM | $7,000,000 |
| ALFOND SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $5,609,911 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND | $4,502,515 |
| MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM | $4,454,529 |
| BIGELOW LABORATORY FOR OCEAN SCIENCES | $3,869,390 |
| THOMAS COLLEGE | $3,000,000 |
| THE JACKSON LABORATORY | $2,500,000 |
| FOCUSMAINE | $2,260,000 |
| COLBY COLLEGE | $2,000,612 |
| ALFOND YOUTH & COMMUNITY CENTER | $2,000,000 |
| MAINE MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE ALLIANCE | $1,987,890 |
| JOBS FOR MAINE'S GRADUATES INC | $1,926,461 |
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 (FY17–20, $4.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 66% 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 9% of Harold Alfond 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.
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 +45% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2024, 38 since wound down; 3 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.0M 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
The President and Trustees of Colby College8× · 2017–2024 · $97M · revenue +37%
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $37M · revenue +63%- RCROLLINS COLLEGE4× · 2019–2022 · $30M · revenue +45%
Funded once
- MCMAINE CENTER VENTURESone grant, 2019 · $3.0M · revenue -99%
- GWGood Will Home Associationone grant, 2018 · $2.8M · revenue +6% · 68% of their budget
- GSGood Shepherd Food Bankgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue +50%
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.
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
To enhance, every day, the health of our patients, our families and our communities. We do that through a range of health care services for people of all ages, in a variety of care settings.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Penobscot Bay Medical Center (PBMC) is an acute care hospital that offers inpatient and outpatient care, diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitative services, patient and community education, and a full range of specialty services through…
To connect people to the past, present, and future of Maine's waterways and their global reach.
Maine Historical Society, founded in 1822, is a private non-profit whose mission is to preserve and share Maine's story. Based in Portland, we work closely with communities and partners throughout the state, and serve a statewide and…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
The Academy is dedicated to academic excellence, commitment to the performing arts, leadership, integrity, and a virtuous code of conduct, all of which prepare students to meet the demands of a contemporary world through thoughtful…
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The mission of Midcoast Conservancy is to protect vital lands and waters on a scale that matters and to inspire wonder and action on behalf of all species and the Earth.
The mission of the Bowdoin International Music Festival is to provide gifted young musicians from around the world with an opportunity to study with world-class artists, and to provide audiences with classical music performed to the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Center for Grieving Children and the most unlike its peers is First Amendment Museum At the Gannett House. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 38 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
97 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. 97 of the 116 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 President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds Alfond Scholarship Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of Maine Foundation ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ROLLINS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The Foundation for Maine's Community Colleges ↗
- Who funds THOMAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ALFOND YOUTH & COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR A STRONG MAINE ECONOMY ↗
- Who funds THE JACKSON LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds WATERVILLE CREATES ↗
- Who funds MaineHealth Services ↗
- Who funds Jobs for Maine's Graduates Inc ↗
- Who funds Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ↗
- Who funds University of New England ↗
- Who funds Husson University ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CURRICULUM REDESIGN INC ↗
- Who funds 7 LAKES ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Inc ↗
- Who funds MAINE CENTER VENTURES ↗
- Who funds Good Will Home Association ↗
- Who funds Maine Mathematics & Science Alliance ↗
- Who funds KENTS HILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds EDUCARE CENTRAL MAINE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TRUST FOR LOCAL NEWS ↗
- Who funds Olympia Snowe Women's Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds Children's Center Early Intervention & Family Support ↗
- Who funds Good Shepherd Food Bank ↗
- Who funds GOVERNOR DUMMER ACADEMY THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Saint Joseph's College Saint Joseph's College of Maine ↗
- Who funds Senator George J Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF PUERTO RICO 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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Davis Family Foundation · Lunder Foundation · Bill and Joan Alfond Family Foundation · Kennebec Savings Bank Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · John T Gorman Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Onion Foundation · Libra Foundation · Fisher 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 Harold Alfond 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- International Institute of New England Inc — 24% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- The Arts Foundation of Cape Cod — 6% of income from government
- Boston Lyric Opera Company — 3% of income from government
- Governor Dummer Academy the Governor's Academy — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rollins College — 0% of income from government
- Gulfshore Playhouse Inc — 0% of income from government
- Cahoon Museum of American Art 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 Harold Alfond Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Harold Alfond 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.