Skip to content
Plinth

· Private foundation

Ironwood Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$73k
Granted FY2024still arriving
3
Grants FY2024still arriving
3
States reached
$60k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172024.

Religion$355kEducation$243kHuman Services$100kHealth$43kEmployment$10k
02FY2024 · 3 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k1 grant · $3k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
$10,000
Median grant
3
States reached
$133k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
TRIVIUM SCHOOL$60,000
THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE$10,000
CARDINAL KUNG ACADEMY$2,500
02The need
03

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.

show:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 81% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 8%ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON: $100k → 7%MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY INSTITUTE: $20k → 8%ST ADELAIDE'S PARISH: $100k → 10%TRIVIUM SCHOOL: $60k → 11%CAREER COLLABORATIVE INC: $10k → 16%THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE: $35k → 10%CARDINAL KUNG ACADEMY: $3k → 9%MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY INSTITUTE: $15k → 8%ST ADELAIDE PARISH: $25k → 10%TRIVIUM SCHOOL: $60k → 11%GATE OF HEAVEN CATHOLIC CHURCH: $15k → 16%THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE: $10k → 10%MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY INSTITUTE: $8k → 8%TRIVIUM SCHOOL: $60k → 11%GATE OF HEAVEN CATHOLIC CHURCH: $15k → 16%THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE: $5k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

04

Where the work is directed

The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.

About 42% of Ironwood 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, 67% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 37% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.

Ironwood Foundationlessmore of its giving
Placed by recipient address · 13% directed abroad (not shown)

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

40%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$303k · 4 repeat orgs$448k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +91% since the first grant, against -25% for the ones you funded once.

4 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

4
7

Total granted

$303k
$445k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+91%
-25%

Still filing today

75%
14%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
EducationHealthOther

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

  • TS
    TRIVIUM SCHOOL INC
    4× · 2017–2024 · $180k · revenue +137%
  • TA
    THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE
    3× · 2019–2024 · $50k · revenue +35%
  • MF
    Massachusetts Family Institute Inc
    4× · 2017–2024 · $43k · revenue +91%

Funded once

  • SO
    SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE INC
    one grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +27%
  • RC
    ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON
    2× · 2023–2024 · $100k
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    3× · 2022–2024 · $100k

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Trinity Collegiate School

To be a college preparatory school of academic excellence rooted in the faith, values and caring of the judeo-christian tradition.

Education
2
The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Co

Ncr connects catholics to church, faith and the common good with independent news, analysis and spiritual reflection.

Religion
3
Center of Theological Inquiry

The Center of Theological Inquiry is an independent research institution with an international visiting scholar program which convenes researchers in an ideal setting for interdisciplinary inquiries where theology casts light on global…

Religion
4
Institute of Catholic Culture

The institute of catholic culture is an adult catechetical organization, faithful to the magisterium of the catholic church. the institute seeks to fulfill its mission by offering educational programs structured upon the classical liberal…

Religion
5
St Peter Catholic

St. Peter Catholic High School empowers students to be models of faith through Catholic spiritual formation, while providing a creative and comprehensive education in career and technical pathways.

Education
6
Providence Preparatory School

Providence preparatory school is a christian, classical, collaborative prek-12 school.

Education
7
Chesterton Academy of Milw Inc

An education with a rigorous classical curriculum taught through the lens of the Catholic faith.

Education
8
Collegium Institute

Collegium Institute is a Catholic intellectual apostolate that fosters the Catholic intellectual tradition within the University of Pennsylvania community and within the greater region and secular academia. (Continued on Sch. O)

9
Trinity Communications

Advancing the catholic faith through education and dissemination of information by operation of websites.

10
Paulist Press Inc

The Paulist Press was founded to provide Catholic literature and resources for the the religious use of parishes, institutions, individuals and other religious bodies to further the educational and mission goals of the Christian faith and…

11
Axiom Christian Classical School

To provide a comprehensive Christian Classical education to grades 1-12.

Education
12
The Canterbury Episcopal School

The Canterbury Episcopal School provides a rigorous education in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences for students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. The faculty encourages Canterbury students to explore and examine a…

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Pregnancy Clinics Inc and the most unlike its peers is New Oxford Review Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

8 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 8 of the 12 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/8
Grantees still filing
5/8
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

TRIVIUM SCHOOL INC — $180,000 · OtherTRIVIUM SCHOOL INCSHRINE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE INC — $100,000 · OtherSHRINE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE INCROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON — $100,000 · OtherROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTONIndividual grant recipient — $100,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipientSHRINE OF OUR LADY OF QUADALUPE INC — $100,000 · OtherSHRINE OF OUR LADY OF QUADALUPE INCGATE OF HEAVEN CATHOLIC CHURCH — $30,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipient — $25,000 · Other+2 more — $12,500 · OtherTHOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE — $50,000 · EducationTHOMAS AQ…PARENTS EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC — $10,000 · EducationPARENTS E…Massachusetts Family Institute Inc — $43,000 · Health
Other$647,500Education$60,000Health$43,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetTRIVIUM SCHOOL INC — $180,000 over 4y, 5.6% of budgetTHOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE — $50,000 over 3y, 0.1% of budgetMassachusetts Family Institute Inc — $43,000 over 4y, 2.2% of budgetCAREER COLLABORATIVE INC — $10,000 over 2y, 1.1% of budgetPARENTS EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC — $10,000 over 3y, 4.7% of budget
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 TRIVIUM SCHOOL INC
  • Who funds SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE INC
  • Who funds THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE
  • Who funds Massachusetts Family Institute Inc
  • Who funds CAREER COLLABORATIVE INC
  • Who funds PARENTS EDUCATION FOUNDATION 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.

Natl Christian Charitable Fdn IncGA8.1× affinity4 shared granteesties to 4 of 4Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Ironwood 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 30%1%3%6%10%your share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    3get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 12 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph