· Private foundation
Make Waves Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAPE COD HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| XAVERIAN BROTHERS HIGH SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC | $2,500 |
| THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH | $2,500 |
| XAVERIAN BROTHERS | $1,000 |
| XAVERIAN BROTHERS | $1,000 |
| DUKE UNIVERSITY | $1,000 |
| COTUIT LIBRARY | $500 |
| XAVERIAN BROTHERS HIGH SCHOOL | $200 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 27% of your 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 +51% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 2 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
DUKE UNIVERSITY7× · 2017–2025 · $618k · revenue +51%
THE WINSOR SCHOOL6× · 2017–2022 · $450k · revenue +46%
TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE3× · 2017–2020 · $155k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- CCCATHOLIC CHURCH EXTENSION SOCIETY OF US OF AMERone grant, 2018 · $10k
- CCCLEVELAND CLINICone grant, 2018 · $5k
- DEDEA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $1k
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 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.
As a jesuit catholic university committed to academic rigor, inclusive excellence, and care for the whole person, john carroll university inspires individuals of intellect and character to learn, lead and serve in the community and…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
Smith college educates women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. a college of and for the world, smith college links the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, developing leaders for society's…
Clark university's mission is to educate undergraduate and graduate students to be imaginative and contributing citizens of the world, and to advance the frontiers of knowledge and understanding through rigorous scholarship and creative…
The masters school celebrates active participation, deep understanding, and meaningful connection. a community of diverse individuals, we gather to learn, to strive, to dare, to do - to be a power for good in the world.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
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.…
To educate students in the liberal arts through free inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.when grinnell college framed its charter in the iowa territory of the united states in 1846, it set forth a mission to educate its students "for…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Duke University and the most unlike its peers is Joyal Capital Management 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.
9 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. 9 of the 18 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 DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE WINSOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds MARTIN W RICHARD CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds JOYAL CAPITAL MANAGEMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF COTUIT MOSQUITO YACHT CLUB 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: 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 Make Waves 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.
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% 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 Make Waves Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Make Waves Foundation 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.