· Private foundation
Make Waves Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $97k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $335k
- $250k+1 grant · $280k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELS FOR AUTISM FOUNDATION | $280,300 |
| FIRST PLACE ARIZONA | $200,000 |
| AUTISM SOCIETY OF AMERICA | $75,300 |
| LA PAZ GLOBAL | $60,000 |
| AUTISM SOCIETY INLAND EMPIRE INC | $45,000 |
| THE IRIS FUND | $12,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSONS RESEARCH | $10,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $10,000 |
| POSTPARTUM SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL | $10,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| AMIGOS OF COSTA RICA INC | $9,500 |
| BEST BUDDIES INTERNATIONAL INC | $5,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC | $5,000 |
| ARC OF GREATER PLYMOUTH INC | $5,000 |
| HEALTHCARE NEPAL INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +70% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 1 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- FPFIRST PLACE AZ5× · 2018–2024 · $644k · revenue +147%
- EFELS FOR AUTISM FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $382k · revenue +37%
- LPLa Paz Global2× · 2023–2024 · $70k · revenue +145%
Funded once
- CACLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -2%
AMERICARES FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +35%- KNKATHLEEN NIES CO IGLOO PRODUCTS CORone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
To improve the lives of people through innovative scientific and engineering research.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
Our mission is to accelerate scientific progress, understand the root causes of disease, and narrow the gap between discoveries and impact on patients.
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.
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. activate partners with u.s. based funders, research institutions, and other pillars of the hard technology community to help entrepreneurial…
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
To accelerate the development of breakthrough discoveries that will transform the lives of people living with food allergies.
To significantly improve the lives of people with down syndrome through research, medical care, education and advocacy. an important part of this mission is to support the global affiliate organizations that we helped establish and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Place Az and the most unlike its peers is The Preemptive Love Coalition. 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
42 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. 42 of the 92 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 MORGAN STANLEY GLOBAL IMPACT FUNDING TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST PLACE AZ ↗
- Who funds ELS FOR AUTISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds La Paz Global ↗
- Who funds Autism Society Inland Empire Inc ↗
- Who funds AMIGOS OF COSTA RICA INC ↗
- Who funds POSTPARTUM SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COUNTY'S COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHCARE NEPAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF GREATER PLYMOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds Best Buddies International Inc ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VERNON AVENUE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GUANACASTE DRY FOREST CONSERVATION FUND ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND BAPTIST HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK ROAD RUNNERS INC ↗
- Who funds AUTISM SOCIETY OF AMERICA 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: Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · 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 Make Waves Family 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.
- The Arc of Greater Plymouth Inc — 95% of income from government
- Friendship Home Inc — 66% of income from government
- Postpartum Support International — 43% of income from government
- Autism Society of America Inc — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
- Duxbury Beach Reservation Inc — 3% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- New England Baptist Hospital — 1% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge 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.