· Public charity
Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp
The MASSACHUSETTS LEGAL ASSISTANCE CORPoration provides leadership and support to improve civil legal services to low-income people in massachusetts through collaboration with the legal services community, the legislature, the public, the bar, and the judiciary.
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
- $10k–50k2 grants · $97k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $120k
- $250k+17 grants · $72M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES | $17,806,869 |
| COMMUNITY LEGAL AID | $16,225,884 |
| SOUTH COASTAL COUNTIES LEGAL SERVICES | $10,001,652 |
| NORTHEAST LEGAL AID | $9,143,292 |
| MASSACHUSETTS LAW REFORM INSTITUTE | $7,959,472 |
| METRO WEST LEGAL SERVICES | $3,345,061 |
| DISABILITY LAW CENTER | $1,458,405 |
| CHILDRENS LAW CENTER OF MASSACHUSETTS | $916,066 |
| DENOVO | $909,722 |
| PRISONERS LEGAL SERVICES | $865,724 |
| CENTER FOR PUBLIC REPRESENTATION | $823,615 |
| PAIR PROJECT | $601,318 |
| CENTER FOR LAW AND EDUCATION | $567,176 |
| NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER | $478,400 |
| MASSACHUSETTS ADVOCATES FOR CHILDREN | $442,201 |
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 (FY18–25, $4.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +159% since the first grant, against +93% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- GBGREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $98M · revenue +120% · 53% of their budget
COMMUNITY LEGAL AID INC9× · 2017–2025 · $88M · revenue +213% · 69% of their budget- SCSOUTH COASTAL COUNTIES LEGAL SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $54M · revenue +190% · 66% of their budget
Funded once
LAWRENCE FAMILY DEVELOPMENT INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $40k · revenue +93%
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.
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For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Veterans Legal Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River Massachusetts Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 43 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 11% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 28 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 GREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COASTAL COUNTIES LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS LAW REFORM INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds METROWEST LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Children Law Center of Massachusetts Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR PUBLIC REPRESENTATION INC ↗
- Who funds DE NOVO CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HEALING ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS CORRECTIONAL LEGAL SERVICES INC DBA PRISONERS' LEGAL SVCS ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR LAW AND EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds VICTIM RIGHTS LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS ADVOCATES FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds POLITICAL ASYLUMIMMIGRATION REPRESENTATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds VETERANS LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT OF THE BOSTON BAR ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE AT WORK INC ↗
- Who funds RIAN IMMIGRANT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTH LAW ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRO PRESENTE INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds LA COLABORATIVA INC ↗
- Who funds Brazilian Worker Center Inc ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT FAMILY SERVICES INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds ESSEX COUNTY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds LAWRENCE FAMILY DEVELOPMENT 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: Boston Bar Foundation · Massachusetts Bar Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Barr Foundation · The Clowes Fund Incorporated · Gardiner Howland Shaw Foundation · The Fish Family Foundation · The Skadden Foundation · The Cabot Family Charitable Trust
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 Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp 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.
- Lawrence Family Development Inc — 100% of income from government
- Victim Rights Law Center Inc — 89% of income from government
- Disability Law Center Inc — 57% of income from government
- Health Law Advocates Inc — 52% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- Veterans Legal Services Inc — 16% of income from government
- Essex County Community Organization — 15% of income from government
- Metrowest Legal Services Inc — 10% of income from government
- De Novo Center for Justice and Healing — 9% of income from government
- Brazilian Worker Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Community Legal Aid Inc — 5% of income from government
- Greater Boston Legal Services Inc — 3% of income from government
- Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River Massachusetts Inc — 2% of income from government
- National Consumer Law Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Justice at Work 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.