· Private foundation
Henry David Thoreau Foundation Inc
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 $10k20 grants · $122k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $196k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAVANNAH STATE UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FOUNDATION | $38,300 |
| HARVARD COLLEGE | $26,000 |
| DARTMOUTH COLLEGE | $25,885 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $13,000 |
| WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE | $13,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $6,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS | $6,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MAINE ORONO | $6,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA | $6,500 |
| SMITH COLLEGE | $6,500 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $6,500 |
| AMHERST COLLEGE | $6,500 |
| VANDERBUILT UNIVERSITY | $6,500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 54% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 +27% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 4 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC3× · 2022–2024 · $118k · revenue +8%
Cornell University6× · 2017–2024 · $98k · revenue +59%
COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC3× · 2017–2023 · $92k · revenue +45%
Funded once
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIAone grant, 2018 · $40k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF FLORIDAone grant, 2021 · $40k
DUKE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2021 · $39k · revenue +1%
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.
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.
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…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
At Roger Williams University, students are prepared to be thinkers and doers ready to solve challenging problems with innovative solutions. RWU offers robust offerings of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across eight…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
Dean college is a private, residential new england college grounded in a culture and tradition that all students deserve the opportunity to discover and exceed their greatest aspirations. a personal and transformative community since 1865,…
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northeastern University and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 81 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 61 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds AMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Scripps College ↗
- Who funds Spelman College ↗
- Who funds The President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds Davidson College ↗
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: Ge Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving 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 Henry David Thoreau Foundation 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 26% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology — 12% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 11% of income from government
- Brandeis University — 8% of income from government
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 6% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 5% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 4% of income from government
- Sea Education Association Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 0% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 0% of income from government
- Reed Institute — 0% of income from government
- Amherst College Trustees — 0% of income from government
- Williams College — 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.