· Private foundation
Paul Hellman Foundation
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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NIRH | $2,866 |
| COMMON CAUSE | $2,484 |
| GRASSROOTS GROCERY | $1,529 |
| NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION | $1,338 |
| GIVE DIRECTLY | $1,338 |
| JEREMIAH PROGRAM | $956 |
| SEEDS FOR PEACE | $573 |
| CHARITY NAVIGATOR | $382 |
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 (FY17–24, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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.
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 Paul Hellman Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 12% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 0% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +80% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 5 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, 33% 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
- CCCOMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND2× · 2020–2021 · $9k · revenue +112%
- JPJEREMIAH PROGRAM7× · 2017–2024 · $8k · revenue +161%
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE3× · 2017–2019 · $4k · revenue +101%
Funded once
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INCone grant, 2020 · $4k · revenue -54%- 3350ORGone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue +2%
GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +34%
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.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Our mission is to build a movement of global citizens whose actions will help achieve our vision of a world without extreme poverty.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.
The mission of the global alliance for improved nutrition (gain) is to improve the consumption of healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable, by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and sustainability of…
Namati, inc. (namati) is dedicated to putting the law in people's hands. we strive to build a just world, in which every one of us can take part in the decisions and demand accountability from the institutions that affect our lives.…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
Improve the food value chain in developing countries by mobilizing corporate volunteers to share knowledge and expertise with small and growing food processors.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Action Against Hunger - Usa and the most unlike its peers is Humane World for Animals International. 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 31 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 42 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 COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds JEREMIAH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR RAINFOREST NATIONS SECRETARIAT ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds NY COMMUNITY FRIDGE CORP ↗
- Who funds EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY SUPPORT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GIVEDIRECTLY INC ↗
- Who funds 350ORG ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals International ↗
- Who funds GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE BRIGID ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE METROWEST FREE MEDICAL PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds The Life You Can Save ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds METAVIVOR RESEARCH AND SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds Good Call NYC ↗
- Who funds ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CAMFED USA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Arms Control and ↗
- Who funds Charity Navigator ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds PAN-MASSACHUSETTS CHALLENGE 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: American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Paul Hellman Foundation 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.
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% 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.