· Private foundation
McDonald Family Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k23 grants · $79k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry | $10,000 |
| Hartford Stage | $5,000 |
| House of Bread | $5,000 |
| Eversight | $5,000 |
| Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation | $5,000 |
| Greater Hartford Legal Aid Foundation | $5,000 |
| Glastonbury Rotary Club | $4,000 |
| South Park Inn | $4,000 |
| Oak Hill School | $4,000 |
| Greater Hartford Salvation Army | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,500 |
| Interval House | $3,000 |
| Prudence Crandell Center | $3,000 |
| Lyme-Old Lyme Charities Inc | $3,000 |
| ImmaCare Inc | $3,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 100% of McDonald Family Trust’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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 3 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- HSHARTFORD STAGE COMPANY INC5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +61%
- GHGREATER HARTFORD LEGAL AID FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +39%
- FGFIDELCO GUIDE DOG FOUNDATION INC4× · 2021–2025 · $20k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- FFidelcoone grant, 2024 · $5k
- GRGlastonbury Rotary Club Foundationone grant, 2024 · $4k
- OLOld Lyme Lions Clubone grant, 2024 · $3k
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 connecticut housing coalition works to expand housing opportunity and to increase the quantity and quality of affordable housing available to people with low and moderate incomes in connecticut through advocacy, education and…
Visiting Nurse Services of Connecticut, Inc., (VNS) a nonprofit health care provider, finds its mission in the provision of quality home health and hospice services to individuals, families and the communities it serves. VNS is committed…
The connecticut humane society is the leading resource in the state for companion animal welfare, enriching the lives of families and communities through adoption services, medical care, education, and prevention of cruelty.
The mission of the agency is to provide and safeguard quality home health care to all persons in need, especially the indigent and medically underserved population. The agency strongly believes that appropriate health care is a fundamental…
The Hospital of Central Connecticut is dedicated to fostering, sustaining and improving the health status of the people in the communities we serve.
To provide and promote wellness and independence to ensure optimal quality of life for the people we serve.
Eastern connecticut housing opportunities, inc. is a non-profit organization organized to provide affordable housing to low-income families of southeastern connecticut.
The humane society of harford county's mission is to promote the humane treatment of homeless, stray and abandoned animals by providing shelter, care, adoptions and community education.
To provide medical services for the residents of the greater hartford connecticut area. to provide quality health care services to low and moderate income individuals in the greater hartford connecticut area regardless of ability to pay.
The mutual housing association of greater hartford, inc. develops and manages affordable housing in greater hartford while engaging residents in leadership and educational opportunities.
Hartford Preservation Alliance's primary mission is to preserve and revitalize Hartford's unique architectural heritage and neighborhood character.
The mission of Hartford Catholic Worker is to practice the works of mercy. We do this through our work with children and families in our neighborhood, helping to make sure the hungry are fed and helping secure housing for the homeless.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hands On Hartford Inc and the most unlike its peers is Noah Webster House Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
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 36 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 FRANCISCAN CENTER FOR URBAN MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds HARTFORD STAGE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER HARTFORD LEGAL AID FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF BREAD INC ↗
- Who funds FIDELCO GUIDE DOG FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HARTFORD INTERVAL HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH PARK INN INC ↗
- Who funds Eversight ↗
- Who funds IMMACARE INC ↗
- Who funds Plainville Community Food Pantry Inc ↗
- Who funds MANCHESTER AREA CONFERENCE OF CHURCHES INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING & SHELTER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Noah Webster House Inc ↗
- Who funds HANDS ON HARTFORD INC ↗
- Who funds THE DIAPER BANK OF CONNECTICUT INC ↗
- Who funds Manes and Motions Therapeutic Riding Center Inc ↗
- Who funds LAWYERS FOR CHILDREN AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds VISION HEALTH INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds PRUDENCE CRANDALL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HARTFORD ARTISANS WEAVING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Hospital For Special Care ↗
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: Hartford Foundation for Public Giving · Aetna Foundation Inc · J Walton Bissell Foundation Inc · Farmington Bank Community Foundation Inc · The Maximilian E and Marion O Hoffman Foundation Inc · Liberty Bank Foundation Inc · Journey Home Inc · Clsj Foundation Inc · Sbm Charitable Foundation Inc · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Sandra & Arnold Chase Family Foundation Inc · The William and Alice Mortensen 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 McDonald Family Trust 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.
- Mercy Housing & Shelter Corporation — 77% of income from government
- Immacare Inc — 52% of income from government
- The Diaper Bank of Connecticut Inc — 49% of income from government
- Noah Webster House Inc — 46% of income from government
- Prudence Crandall Center Inc — 30% of income from government
- South Park Inn Inc — 29% of income from government
- Hands On Hartford Inc — 20% of income from government
- Lawyers for Children America Inc — 19% of income from government
- Hartford Stage Company Inc — 3% of income from government
- Hartford Artisans Weaving Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Hospital for Special Care — 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.