· Private foundation
Kershaw Foundation Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $116k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAIL BOSTON | $45,000 |
| ESPLANADE ASSOCIATION INC | $25,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS | $16,000 |
| NOURISH NANTUCKET | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $10,000 |
| OLD NORTH ILLUMINATED | $7,500 |
| NANTUCKET COTTAGE HOSPITAL | $7,000 |
| BEACON HILL VILLAGE | $5,355 |
| USS CONSTITUTION MUSEUM | $5,100 |
| HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE PUBLIC GARDEN INC | $5,000 |
| BOSTON AREA CHURCH LEAGUE | $5,000 |
| GREAT HARBOR YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION | $1,200 |
| BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
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.
34 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 8 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $45k 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
- UCUSS CONSTITUTION MUSEUM INC6× · 2017–2025 · $75k · revenue +28%
- RBRon Burton Training Village Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $52k · revenue +447%
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc5× · 2017–2023 · $45k · revenue +132%
Funded once
- HLHENRY LEE FUNDone grant, 2024 · $75k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $25k
- MFMASCOTS FOR A CUREone grant, 2017 · $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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
The boston society of architects (bsa/aia) exists to improve the quality of life for boston-area residents by championing innovation in the built environment. as a membership association, we achieve this mission in partnership with the bsa…
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The greater boston convention and visitors bureau, inc.'s mission is to elevate boston's vibrant neighborhoods and diverse people, amplifying their stories and sharing them locally and across the globe. we deliver exciting and inclusive…
New england museum association's mission is to connect a community engaged in learning, collaboration, and action to cultivate a better museum world.
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
Brighton marine, inc. provides military and veteran families with comprehensive campus-based quality health care, as well as affordable and supportive housing for at-risk veterans and their families.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Esplanade Association Inc and the most unlike its peers is Patton Foundation Inc. 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 40 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
62 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. 62 of the 89 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 USS CONSTITUTION MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds SAIL BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Ron Burton Training Village Inc ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE HARBORSAVE THE BAY INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON AREA CHURCH LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON HILL VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds LYNX EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ESPLANADE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds OUR SPACE OUR PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds TENACITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE PUBLIC GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON HILL CIVIC ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds OLD NORTH ILLUMINATED INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISH NANTUCKET INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT HARBOR YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS NEW HAMPSHIRE INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIPWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds SWARTHMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds LOUIS D BROWN PEACE INSTITUTE CORP ↗
- Who funds BOSTON HARBOR NOW INC ↗
- Who funds THE VINCENT CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds A BETTER CITY INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNSON & WALES UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · King Spruce Company · Ernst & Elfriede Frank Foundation Inc · Highland Street Connection and Subsidiaries · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Meyer & Jean Steinberg Family Foundation Inc · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Lovett-Woodsum Foundation Inc · Community Foundation for Nantucket Inc · GivenGain Foundation USA · Barr 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 Kershaw Foundation Charitable Trust 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.
- Old North Illuminated Inc — 94% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Boston Harbor Now Inc — 45% of income from government
- Louis D Brown Peace Institute Corp — 32% of income from government
- Beacon Hill Village Inc — 28% of income from government
- Uss Constitution Museum Inc — 17% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- New England Life Flight Inc — 5% of income from government
- Nantucket Conservation Foundation Inc — 4% of income from government
- Rogerson House Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- New England Baptist Hospital — 1% of income from government
- Friends of the Public Garden Inc — 1% of income from government
- Nantucket Historical Association — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Emerald Necklace Conservancy Inc — 0% of income from government
- National Braille Press Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation 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 Kershaw Foundation Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Kershaw Foundation Charitable Trust 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.