· Public charity
Maine Mountain Collaborative
Through collaboration of land conservation and forestry organizations MMC innovates and accelerates land conservation in the 5 million-acre Maine Appalachian Mountain Corridor.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $51k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Somerset Woods Trustee | $60,000 |
| The Conservation Fund | $15,000 |
| The Trust for Public Land | $15,000 |
| First Light New Learning Journey | $10,865 |
| High Peaks Alliance | $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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 62% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 22% of Maine Mountain Collaborative’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 93% of the giving stays in ME; read by stated purpose it is 61% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +101% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 3 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, 36% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND5× · 2018–2024 · $133k · revenue +119%- MLMahoosuc Land Trust Inc4× · 2017–2023 · $97k · revenue +101%
- HPHIGH PEAKS ALLIANCE2× · 2021–2024 · $31k · revenue +220%
Funded once
- RLRANGELEY LAKES HERITAGE TRUST INCone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +16%
- FOFRIENDS OF WILSON POND AREA INCone grant, 2022 · $25k
- MAMaine Appalachian Trail Land Trustone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +3%
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 Piscataquog Land Conservancy is a nonprofit land conservation organization founded in 1970. Its purpose is to conserve the natural and scenic environment of the Piscataquog, Souhegan and Nashua River watershed communities of southern…
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.
We engage with communities to conserve, steward, and provide access to local lands and clean water for current and future generations to enjoy.
We conserve land permanently to benefit the natural and human communities of western the Penobscot Bay region.
Conservation and preservation of land.
Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.
Our mission is to permanently conserve and steward natural resources across our island and mainland communities for the benefit of current and future generations.
To protect open spaces with conservation, historic or scenic value, including agricultural and forested lands, and wildlife habitats, within the western White Mountains region of Northern New Hampshire.
The royal river conservation trust (rrct) is a regional land trust working primarily in seven maine municipalities. the trust owns,cares for, and stewards land and conservation easements to protect land and water resources for the general…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Conservation Fund a Nonprofit Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Wilson Pond Area Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 15 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 THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds Mahoosuc Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds Forest Society of Maine ↗
- Who funds SOMERSET WOODS TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds RANGELEY LAKES HERITAGE TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds HIGH PEAKS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF WILSON POND AREA INC ↗
- Who funds Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust ↗
- Who funds Appalachian Mountain Club ↗
- Who funds NEW LEARNING JOURNEY 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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Davis Conservation Foundation · Onion Foundation · John Sage Foundation · Fields Pond Foundation Inc · Open Space Institute Land Trust Inc · Quimby Family Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Maine Mountain Collaborative 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.
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 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 Maine Mountain Collaborative?
Find your warmest path to Maine Mountain Collaborative 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.