· Public charity
Macular Degeneration Foundation Inc
To educate and support those who suffer from macular degeneration by providing informationm resources working with low vision centers to recycle donated lowvision deviices providing low cost magnification funding grants for support groups and to further research to restore vision
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.
The 6 grants below total $272,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $282,148 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $10,148 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–50k3 grants · $60k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $212k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Community Services for Vision Rehabilitation | $80,000 |
| SUNY at Buffalo Research Foundation | $75,000 |
| Greater Detroit Agency for Blind and Visually Impaired | $57,000 |
| MD Support | $40,000 |
| Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology | $10,000 |
| VIS Group | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 91% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +19% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 1 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- CSCOMMUNITY SERVICES VISION REHAB6× · 2020–2025 · $430k · revenue +30% · 61% of their budget
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +19%- ACAMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND ENTERPRISES AND SERVICES INC4× · 2020–2023 · $20k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- MEMASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARYone grant, 2020 · $5k
- TITALKING INFORMATION CENTER INCone grant, 2022 · $200 · revenue -9%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
7 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. 7 of the 11 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 COMMUNITY SERVICES VISION REHAB ↗
- Who funds DEPT OF MEDICINE MEDICAL SERVICE GROUP AT SUNY HEALTH SCIENCE CNTR AT SYR INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER DETROIT AGENCY FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND ENTERPRISES AND SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds TALKING INFORMATION CENTER 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: 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 Macular Degeneration 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.
- Talking Information Center Inc — 74% 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.