· Private foundation
Play 2 Dream Charitable Foundation Fka Kathy's Playground Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 61% of PLAY 2 DREAM CHARITABLE FOUNDATION FKA KATHY'S PLAYGROUND CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $3k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $35k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $573k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ZOO NEW ENGLAND | $215,086 |
| WISH PROJECT | $174,542 |
| NEWTON WELLESLEY HOSPITAL | $83,333 |
| SHAMROCK FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS | $50,000 |
| HATTERAS ISLAND CANCER FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| CATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CURTIS ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE | $10,000 |
| DORRANCE DANCE | $1,000 |
| KITTY HAWK BAPTIST CHURCH | $1,000 |
| PAN MASS CHALLENGE | $750 |
| HATTERAS ISLAND RESCUE | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 69% 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.
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 +24% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $61k 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
- CZCOMMONWEALTH ZOOLOGICAL CORPORATION D/B/A ZOO NEW ENGLAND7× · 2017–2025 · $317k · revenue +85%
- BCBOSTON CELTICS SHAMROCK FOUNDATION INC3× · 2021–2023 · $185k · revenue +106%
- CHCAMP HARBOR VIEW FOUNDATION INC6× · 2017–2022 · $179k · revenue +229%
Funded once
- NCNORTH CAROLINA VETERINARY MEDICAL FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $148k · revenue +74%
- TETHE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $109k · revenue +128%
- RCRAM'S CLUB OF UNCone grant, 2019 · $58k
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.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The Foundation provides surgical services primarily to patients at Boston Children's Hospital and at satellite locations. The Foundation carries on and promotes basic and applied medical research and education in the field of surgery by…
To operate exclusively for the benefit of The Children's Hospital Corporation and its affiliated organizations in the conduct of their charitable, educational and scientific functions.
Mcphs university prepares students for careers in health care through teaching, scholarship, research, professional service and community engagement.
Emerson health systems is the parent organization of four subsidiaries - emerson hospital, emerson occupational health services, emerson property development and emerson health care foundation. emerson health systems provides its…
The Foundation provides cardiology services primarily to patients at Boston Children's Hospital and at satellite locations. The Foundation carries on and promotes basic and applied medical research and education in the field of cardiology…
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.
BCNSP supports the following three pillars of Boston Children's Hospital's four-part mission: (1) providing care to individuals in the community, (2) improving clinical care to its patients, and (3) educating and training clinicians. In…
North shore health system medical faculty group practice (the corporation) functions as an extension of the northwell health hospitals by bringing medical care to community settings, providing care to medicare, medicaid, and other…
D-HH operates to establish, manage, govern, and fundraise for an integrated healthcare delivery System. To that end, D-HH is particularly focused to: - Manage the healthcare System to provide services to the public in the most…
The Foundation provides neurosurgical services primarily to patients at Boston Children's Hospital and at satellite locations. The Foundation carries on and promotes basic and applied medical research and education in the field of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Educational Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Riverhill School. 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 34 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 11% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 55 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 COMMONWEALTH ZOOLOGICAL CORPORATION D/B/A ZOO NEW ENGLAND ↗
- Who funds THE WISH PROJECT ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CELTICS SHAMROCK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP HARBOR VIEW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA VETERINARY MEDICAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds JOSLIN DIABETES CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HATTERAS ISLAND CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cathedral High School Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds DORRANCE DANCE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds INNER CITY SCHOLARSHIP FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SCHOLAR ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds HEADING HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CUMMINGS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds COOPERATIVE FOR ASSISTANCE AND RELIEF EVERYWHERE INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHCARE NEPAL INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE NORMAN FOSTER FOUNDATION C/O RUCHELMAN LLP ↗
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: The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Arbella Insurance Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · The US Charitable Gift Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · Verizon Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Endowment 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 Play 2 Dream Charitable Foundation Fka Kathy's Playground Charitable 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Postpartum Support International — 43% of income from government
- Joslin Diabetes Center Inc — 35% of income from government
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% of income from government
- Heading Home Inc — 17% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology — 5% of income from government
- Commonwealth Zoological Corporation D/B/a Zoo New England — 2% of income from government
- Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Camp Harbor View Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- House of Hope Inc — 1% 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 Play 2 Dream Charitable Foundation Fka Kathy's Playground Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Play 2 Dream Charitable Foundation Fka Kathy's Playground Charitable Foundation 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.