· Private foundation
Joseph Persky Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k18 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $203k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $54k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CENTRAL MASS | $54,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS | $25,000 |
| THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART - JILL MEDVEDOW FUND | $20,000 |
| JEWISH HEALTHCARE CENTER | $20,000 |
| WORCESTER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER | $18,000 |
| ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $15,000 |
| GREATER WORCESTER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| WORCESTER COUNTY FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| MUSIC WORCESTER | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS - TROPICAL STORM RELIEF | $10,000 |
| MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| UMASS MEMORIAL HEALTH | $10,000 |
| ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY - CENTER FOR CIVIC FRIENDSHIP | $10,000 |
| ASSOCIATION FOR AUTISM AND NEURODIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $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 (FY20–25, $163k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 57% 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.
37 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS INC6× · 2020–2025 · $96k · revenue +14%- WJWORCESTER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $93k · revenue +88%
- MWMUSIC WORCESTER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $78k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- JFJEWISH FEDERATION OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS-ISREAL EMERGENCY FUNDone grant, 2023 · $25k
- IOINSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTBOSTON-ENDOWMENT CAMPAIGNone grant, 2022 · $13k
- JFJEWISH FOUNDATION OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS-UKRAINE EMERGENCY FUNDone grant, 2022 · $10k
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.
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…
The ecotarium's mission is to inspire a passion for science and nature among all members of the community through one-of-a-kind experiences, interactive exhibits, and accessible programming. as new england's leading science and nature…
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Wpi transforms lives, turns knowledge into action to confront global challenges, and revolutionizes stem through distinctive and inclusive education, projects and research. (http://www.wpi.edu/about/mission.html)
The club is established for the purpose of providing athletic exercises including golf, bowling, swimming, tennis, cross country skiing, and other out-of-door sports, and for the establishment and maintenance of facilities for the…
The worcester business development corporation (wbdc) is a private, non- profit business organization with a public purpose mission to serve as an innovation and leading force in the economic development of the city of worcester and the…
To aid, encourage, advise, and correlate activities dedicated to the promotion of the arts in worcester county, as may be feasible; to integrate such activities into the total life of the community served by the council.
To promote the interests of the university of massachusetts amherst through programs, services and communications that develop and reinforce the bonds between the university and its alumni; to validate the value and alumni pride in the…
To provide an organization devoted exclusively to the prosecution of historic preservation, antiquarian, educational, historical, literary, artisitic and monumental purposes, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of…
The organization is dedicated to being the leading business organization in central massachusetts by providing valuable membership services and programs and events to its members and in advancing and advocating on behalf of economic…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Quaboag Quacumquasit Lake Assoc Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 66 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 11% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 47 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH HEALTHCARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER COUNTY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR AUTISM AND NEURODIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER WORCESTER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BANCROFT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER HISTORICAL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ARTSWORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF CLARK UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA 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: Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · Melvin S Cutler Charitable Foundation · Ruth H & Warren a Ellsworth Foundation · The Fred Harris Daniels Foundation · The Fletcher Foundation · Stoddard Charitable Trust · Schwartz Charitable Foundation · The George I Alden Trust · The C Jean & Myles McDonough Charitable Foundation · J Irving & Jane L England Charitable Trusta Molloy & F Russellco-Trustees · Hoche-Scofield Foundation-Equity · Wyman Gordon
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 Joseph Persky 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Association for Autism and Neurodiversity Inc — 24% of income from government
- Jewish Healthcare Center Inc — 15% of income from government
- Music Worcester Inc — 7% of income from government
- Worcester Chamber Music Society Inc — 5% of income from government
- Worcester Historical Museum — 5% of income from government
- Trustees of Clark University — 2% of income from government
- Artsworcester Inc — 2% of income from government
- Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Worcester Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Worcester County Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% 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 Joseph Persky Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Joseph Persky 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.