· Private foundation
O'Connell Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
78% of O'Connell Family Foundation Inc’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Brown University, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 11 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year O'Connell Family Foundation Inc named its own grantees at scale: 10 organizations, $95k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k11 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $68k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MVYOUTH | $26,999 |
| MARTHA'S VINEYARD PRESERVATION TRUST | $10,850 |
| PESTALOZZI US CHILDREN'S CHARITY INC | $10,000 |
| CARDINAL HAYES HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| CARDINAL SPELLMAN HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| AUSCHWITZ INSTITUTE FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND MASS ATROCITIES | $6,000 |
| THE FARAJA FUND FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| SAVE OUR SOUND | $5,000 |
| THE DAVID BAUM ENDOWMENT TO SECURE A JEWISH FUTURE | $2,500 |
| MSKCC CYCLE FOR SURVIVAL | $2,000 |
| YALE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT | $1,929 |
| BROWN FOOTBALL ANNUAL FUND | $1,284 |
| PAN MASS CHALLENGE | $1,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
| WEST HARLEM ENVIORNMENTAL ACTION (WE ACT) | $500 |
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 (FY20–23, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 67% 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.
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 +61% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2022, 7 since wound down; 14 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- MYMV YOUTH INC5× · 2020–2024 · $103k · revenue +31%
- PUPESTALOZZI US CHILDRENS CHARITY INC4× · 2021–2024 · $35k · revenue +37%
- YOYMCA of Martha's Vineyard Inc2× · 2020–2023 · $30k · revenue +465%
Funded once
- BUBROWN UNIVERSITY DIVISION OF ADVANCEMENTone grant, 2020 · $99k
- VCVESTAR CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $50k
- YUYALE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $40k
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.
To empower students to develop themselves as critical thinkers, compassionate citizens, and engaged participants in local and world affairs.
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Fordham university, the jesuit university of new york, is committed to the discovery of wisdom and the transmission of learning, through research and through education of the highest quality. for more information, see schedule o.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Brunswick school, inc. is a day school for boys in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. the purpose of the school is to educate the "whole boy". it does so by helping boys and young men - without regard to culture, ethnicity or religion…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sheriff's Meadow Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Faraja Fund Foundation. 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 29 years old; the field is 19. 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 10% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 49 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 BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MV YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds PESTALOZZI US CHILDRENS CHARITY INC ↗
- Who funds YMCA of Martha's Vineyard Inc ↗
- Who funds ATHLETE ALLY INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE TO PROTECT NANTUCKET SOUND INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD PRESERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds FARAJA FUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHERIFF'S MEADOW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TEAK FELLOWSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds AUSCHWITZ INSTITUTE FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND MASS ATROCITIES ↗
- Who funds WATERSIDE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BLINKNOW FOUNDATION A NJ NONPROFIT ↗
- Who funds Vineyard House Inc ↗
- Who funds THE IRISH AMERICAN PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds GREENWICH HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds REACH PREP 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: Swartz Foundation Trust · The Stanton Family Foundation · Spector Family Foundation · Hoerle Foundation Inc · Simmons Family Foundation Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Bessemer Giving Fund · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Boston Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic 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 O'Connell Family Foundation Inc 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.
- Martha's Vineyard Preservation Trust Inc — 4% of income from government
- Sheriff's Meadow Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Greenwich Hospital — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to O'Connell Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to O'Connell Family Foundation Inc 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.