· Public charity
Island Institute
We boldly navigate climate and economic change with island and coastal communities to expand opportunities and deliver solutions.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $442,040 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $704,475 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $262,435 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k12 grants · $261k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $181k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Luke's Lobster Holding LLC | $180,811 |
| Eastport Energy Committee | $43,729 |
| Pendleton Yacht Yard | $40,000 |
| Town of Isle au Haut | $37,500 |
| Maine Ocean Farms LLC | $30,000 |
| Matinicus Isle Plantation | $20,000 |
| Town of Isle au Haut | $15,000 |
| Foundation for Strong Maine Economy | $15,000 |
| Town of Tremont | $15,000 |
| Midcoast Council of Governments | $12,500 |
| Hancock County Planning Commission | $12,500 |
| Town of Islesboro | $10,000 |
| Peaks Environmental Action Team | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–20, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +86% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 6 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
- HCHANCOCK COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION4× · 2022–2025 · $43k · revenue +86%
NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC3× · 2020–2023 · $23k · revenue +25%- MCMOMENTUM CONSERVATION2× · 2020–2021 · $20k · revenue +292%
Funded once
- NLNATIONAL LEAD FOR AMERICA INCone grant, 2024 · $27k · revenue 0%
- AEAxiom Education & Training Centerone grant, 2021 · $25k
- BIBiddeford Internet Corpone grant, 2021 · $20k
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.
The program mission of the quebec-labrador foundation u.s. is defined by a regional component (new england and eastern canada), and an international component, which ties our regional model to a global conservation network. qlf's program…
Maine Audubon works to conserve Maine's wildlife and habitat by engaging people of all ages in education, conservation, and action. We are helping the people of Maine become the nation's most informed and effective stewards of wildlife and…
ClimateWork Maine (CWM) is a private non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Maine that serves as a support network for businesses and business leaders that are taking action on climate change, to meet its challenges and to seize the…
To build lasting prosperity without sacrificing the quality of life that defines maine.
Secure a sustainable future for fisheries and fishing communities in Eastern Maine and beyond.
Conservation law foundation, inc. (clf) protects new england's environment for the benefit of all people and future generations. we use the law, science, and markets to create solutions that preserve and restore our natural resources,…
The mission of the SRLT is to recognize and conserve the rich wild and workinglandscape of Central Maine's Sebasticook River watershed through conservation,stewardship and education. Our focal programs are land conservation for…
Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.
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 Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative (EMCI) is a non-profit organization with broad conservation interests that seeks to: 1) Foster environmentally sustainable communities of the eastern Maine coast; 2) Encourage an appreciation of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Foundation for a Strong Maine Economy and the most unlike its peers is National Audubon Society Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 65 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.
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 · Center for Technology and Civic Life · Maine Coast Heritage Trust · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Davis Conservation Foundation · Onion Foundation · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · 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 Island Institute 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.
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.