· Public charity
Maine Development Foundation
The mission of the Maine Development Foundation is to foster sustainable, long-term economic growth for Maine.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 15 grants below total $543,301 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $557,301 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $14,000 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $129k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $352k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ellsworth Historical Society | $192,063 |
| Colonial Theater Inc | $160,189 |
| Our Katahdin | $41,048 |
| Sunrise County Economic Council | $32,001 |
| 60 Lowell Street LLC | $24,856 |
| Town of Lincoln | $20,479 |
| Augusta Downtown Alliance | $10,146 |
| Town of Houlton | $8,509 |
| Main Street Bath | $8,423 |
| Porter Memorial Library | $8,193 |
| Discover Downtown Westbrook | $8,000 |
| Heart of Biddeford | $8,000 |
| Gardiner Main Street | $8,000 |
| Rockland Main Street Inc | $8,000 |
| Our Town Belfast | $5,394 |
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 (FY23–24, $117k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +2% since the first grant, against -23% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $352k 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
- EPEASTPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY3× · 2020–2022 · $248k · revenue +0% · 50% of their budget
- OKOur Katahdin3× · 2022–2024 · $236k · revenue +223%
SUNRISE COUNTY ECONOMIC COUNCIL2× · 2023–2024 · $64k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- HOHEART OF ELLSWORTHgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $63k · revenue +35% · 33% of their budget
- NMNorway Maine Opera House Corpone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -35% · 46% of their budget
- CCCHOCOLATE CHURCH ARTS CENTERone grant, 2022 · $42k · revenue +11%
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 Gardiner Chamber of Commerce serves to promote business and tourism in the community.
To promote business and economic development in the cities of lewiston and auburn
Promotion of the boothbay harbor area of maine for tourism and industry and maintenance of a regional information center for the general public.
Economic development of rural Oregon towns
Enhance the business climate, the quality of life, and economic wellbeing of the businesses and people of maine
The mission is to enhance the vitality and appeal of downtown Brunswick, Maine as a center of business activity, to increase the general physical and psychological appeal of the downtown, and to promote the cultural, retail, service, and…
Promotion of downtown bangor, maine
Bangor Historical Society's Mission is to share the region's rich history with the community and its visitors through research, education and programs.
The Grand is an iconic Art Deco theater in Downeast, Maine that fosters social interaction and growth in artists and audiences through the arts, entertainment and education.
To foster, encourage and assist in the location, settlement or resettlement of industry and recreational, agricultural,and other business enterprises in the Town of Skowhegan and in the County of Somerset.
Our mission is to be a catalyst for growth and development of our region through collaborative policymaking, eliminating barriers, connecting leaders, promoting prosperity, and welcoming diversity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Heart of Ellsworth and the most unlike its peers is Ellsworth Historical Society. 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 26 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% 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 8% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 31 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 EASTPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Our Katahdin ↗
- Who funds ELLSWORTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds COLONIAL THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds Main Street Bath ↗
- Who funds SUNRISE COUNTY ECONOMIC COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ROCKLAND MAIN STREET INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN WESTBROOK COALITION ↗
- Who funds GARDINER MAIN STREET ↗
- Who funds HEART OF ELLSWORTH ↗
- Who funds HEART OF BIDDEFORD ↗
- Who funds AUGUSTA DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Our Town Belfast ↗
- Who funds Norway Maine Opera House Corp ↗
- Who funds CHOCOLATE CHURCH ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Center Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds Kennebec Valley Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL MAINE COMMUNITY BETTERMENT COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Northern Maine Development Commission ↗
- Who funds LEWISTON AUBURN METROPOLITAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds LEWISTON AUBURN METROPOLITAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Davis Family Foundation · Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust · Center for Technology and Civic Life · Bill and Joan Alfond Family Foundation · Onion Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · 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 Maine Development 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.
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.