· Public charity
Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory
To improve human health by discovering fundamental mechanisms of tissue repair, aging and regeneration, translating our discoveries for the benefit of medicine and society, and developing the next generation of scientific leaders.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 16 grants below total $1,696,254 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,899,509 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,203,255 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k6 grants · $145k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+1 grant · $328k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UT Southwestern Medical Center | $328,027 |
| University of Maine | $223,197 |
| President and Trustees of Bates College | $184,454 |
| The Rogosin Institute Inc | $170,003 |
| University of Maine Machias | $136,115 |
| Southern Maine Community College | $125,186 |
| Bowdoin College | $119,377 |
| President and Trustees of Colby College | $119,122 |
| College of the Atlantic | $82,105 |
| University of Maine Farmington | $63,476 |
| University of New England | $37,607 |
| University of Maine Fort Kent | $28,294 |
| Trustees of Dartmouth College | $24,380 |
| University of Maine Presque Isle | $21,602 |
| University of Maine Augusta | $20,971 |
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 (FY18–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 81% of your 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 +24% since the first grant, against -3% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 4 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $198k 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
- TRThe Rogosin Institute Inc2× · 2023–2024 · $437k · revenue +4%
PRESIDENT AND TRUSTEES OF BATES COLLEGE2× · 2023–2024 · $374k · revenue +26%
The President and Trustees of Colby College2× · 2023–2024 · $296k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- SISCHOODIC INSTITUTE AT ACADIA NATIONAL PARKgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue +26%
- IIIsland Instituteone grant, 2023 · $14k · revenue -3%
- GRGORDON RESEARCH CONFERENCES INCone grant, 2023 · $7k · revenue -6%
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 Reed College is to provide education in the liberal arts and sciences.
At Roger Williams University, students are prepared to be thinkers and doers ready to solve challenging problems with innovative solutions. RWU offers robust offerings of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across eight…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
Rensselaer educates the leaders of tomorrow for technologically based careers. We celebrate discovery and the responsible application of technology to create knowledge and global prosperity.
Goucher College provides an innovative liberal arts education that prepares students with a broad, humane perspective for a life of inquiry, creativity, and critical and analytical thinking. The College's vision is to become a top-100…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
Pitzer College produces engaged socially responsible citizens of the world through an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding and environmental sensitivity.…
Through a commitment to immersive learning, we prepare students to lead engaged, consequential, and creative lives, contribute to their communities, and address the world's most challenging problems.
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.
Since 1775, the mission of Hampden-Sydney College has been to form good men and good citizens in an atmosphere of sound learning.
Wake Forest University, a 501(c)(3) institution of higher education, is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts and in graduate and professional education. The organization is comprised of seven constituent parts: Wake…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bowdoin College and the most unlike its peers is The Jackson Laboratory. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 23 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 The Rogosin Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT AND TRUSTEES OF BATES COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds Bowdoin College ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Dartmouth College ↗
- Who funds THE JACKSON LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds University of New England ↗
- Who funds SCHOODIC INSTITUTE AT ACADIA NATIONAL PARK ↗
- Who funds MaineHealth ↗
- Who funds Island Institute ↗
- Who funds GORDON RESEARCH CONFERENCES 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory 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.
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 Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory?
Find your warmest path to Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory 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.