· Private foundation
Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k47 grants · $270k
- $10k–50k75 grants · $981k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Preble Street | $50,000 |
| Wabanaki Community Foundation | $20,000 |
| Maine Environmental Education Association | $20,000 |
| Greater Portland Landmarks | $20,000 |
| Friends of the Veterans' Memorial Library | $20,000 |
| Maine Preservation | $20,000 |
| Indigo Arts Alliance | $20,000 |
| Bomazeen Land Trust | $20,000 |
| Maine Humanities Council | $20,000 |
| Maine Historical Society | $20,000 |
| Eastern Trail Alliance | $15,000 |
| Aroostook Arts and Education Center DBA Wintergreen Arts Center | $15,000 |
| Maine Coast Heritage Trust | $15,000 |
| Johnson Hall Inc | $15,000 |
| Scarborough Land Trust | $15,000 |
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 (FY25–25, $95k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 11% 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.
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 10% of Morton-Kelly Charitable 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 +19% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
71 repeat relationships — 53 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 69 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $695k 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
- MHMAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY3× · 2020–2025 · $70k · revenue +37%
- MSMaine Seacoast Mission3× · 2020–2025 · $70k · revenue +98%
Portland Museum of Art3× · 2020–2025 · $65k · revenue +7%
Funded once
- GSGood Shepherd Food Bankgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $40k · revenue +50%
- N(Nibezun (Wabanaki Cultural Preservation Committee)one grant, 2022 · $20k
- TCTimelines Community, Inc / The Farwell Projectone grant, 2022 · $20k
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 the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts is to inspire, engage and educate through the exhibition, preservation and collection of photographic works. The Museums programs address contemporary, historical, cultural and…
The mission of Islesboro Islands Trust is to enhance the quality of residents' lives through the preservation of open space, educate all residents as to the value of the island's natural ecosystems, and act as an environmental advocate on…
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
The mission of the mount desert land & garden preserve is to conserve and share the beauty of our historic lands and gardens.
To conserve for the public benefit natural habitat, scenic beauty, and working land of the Boothbay region of Maine by providing stewardship, public access, and environmental programs.
To conserve lands with significant ecological or cultural resources and manage them in a sustainable way for public benefit.
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 Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative (EMCI) is a non-profit organization with broad conservation interests that seeks to: 1) Foster environmentally sustainable communities of the eastern Maine coast; 2) Encourage an appreciation of…
Maine Rivers is a statewide advocacy organization. Our mission is to protect, restore and enhance the ecological health of Maine's river systems. We support and direct efforts to conserve and improve the health of Maine's rivers and…
Our mission is to permanently conserve and steward natural resources across our island and mainland communities for the benefit of current and future generations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine and the most unlike its peers is Classical Uprising. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
168 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. 168 of the 222 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 CHILDREN'S MUSEUM AND THEATRE OF MAINE ↗
- Who funds MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Maine Seacoast Mission ↗
- Who funds Portland Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND STAGE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds PREBLE STREET ↗
- Who funds MAINE HUMANITIES COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds GULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SCHOODIC ARTS FOR ALL ↗
- Who funds MAYO STREET ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds EASTPORT ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds WATERFALL ARTS ↗
- Who funds PEJEPSCOT HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ↗
- Who funds Good Shepherd Food Bank ↗
- Who funds LAND PEACE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Indigo Arts Alliance ↗
- Who funds BOMAZEEN LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds LAKE STEWARDS OF MAINE - MAINE VOLUNTEER LAKE MONITORING PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Cobscook Community Learning Center ↗
- Who funds DOWNEAST INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED MARINE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CASCO BAY ↗
- Who funds Ecology Education Inc ↗
- Who funds Wild Seed Project ↗
- Who funds Eastern Trail Alliance ↗
- Who funds MAINE ORGANIC FARMERS AND GARDENERS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Farmland Trust ↗
- Who funds AROOSTOOK ARTS & EDUCATION CENTER WINTERGREEN ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Maine Mathematics & Science Alliance ↗
- Who funds Appalachian Mountain Club ↗
- Who funds Natural Resources Council of Maine Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BAXTER STATE PARK ↗
- Who funds Maine Appalachian Trail Club ↗
- Who funds Johnson Hall Inc ↗
- Who funds TEAR CAP WORKSHOPS ↗
- Who funds BRICK STORE MUSEUM 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: Onion Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Davis Family Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Davis Conservation Foundation · Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation Inc · Fisher Charitable Foundation · Horizon Foundation Inc · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Quimby Family Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · Simmons Foundation - PerkinsThompson
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 Morton-Kelly Charitable 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 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 Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust 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.