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Portside Foundation at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Portside Foundation

The Portside Foundation is organized as a public benefit corporation for the purpose of conducting fundraising events and activities to support charitable, scientific, and educational causes.

$187k
Granted FY2021
8
Grants FY2021
1
States reached
$114k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead

Read this first · the figures below need context

62% of Portside Foundation’s FY2021 grant dollars went to Maine Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.

Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2021 names 7 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.

01What it funds
01FY2021 · 8 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2021

  • Under $10k5 grants · $32k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $39k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $114k
$7,500
Median grant
1
States reached
$6k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Maine Community Foundation$114,400
Maine Audubon$22,000
Full Plates Full Potential$17,105
Foundation for Portland Public Schools$7,500
Maine Farmland Trust$7,500
Ben's Fight$6,000
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland$5,782
Maine Cancer Foundation$5,603
02The need
02

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY21–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 69% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 7%Full Plates Full Potential: $17k → 7%Ben's Fight: $6k → 9%Maine Community Foundation: $114k → 11%Maine Farmland Trust: $8k → 13%Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland: $6k → 7%Foundation for Portland Public Schools: $8k → 7%Maine Audubon: $22k → 7%Maine Cancer Foundation: $6k → 7%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field
03the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 8 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
5
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
6/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Maine Community Foundation Inc: $114,400 · PhilanthropyMaine Community Foundation IncFoundation for Portland Public Schools: $7,500 · PhilanthropyFoundation for Portland Public SchoolsFULL PLATES FULL POTENTIAL: $17,105 · Food & NutritionFULL PLATES FUL…Maine Farmland Trust: $7,500 · Food & NutritionMaine Farmland …Maine Audubon Society: $22,000 · EnvironmentMaine Audubon…Ben's Fight: $6,000 · OtherHABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER PORTLAND: $5,782 · OtherMaine Cancer Foundation: $5,603 · Health
Philanthropy$121,900Food & Nutrition$24,605Environment$22,000Other$11,782Health$5,603

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetMaine Community Foundation Inc: $114,400 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetMaine Audubon Society: $22,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetFULL PLATES FULL POTENTIAL: $17,105 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetFoundation for Portland Public Schools: $7,500 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetMaine Farmland Trust: $7,500 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetHABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER PORTLAND: $5,782 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetMaine Cancer Foundation: $5,603 over 1y, 0.2% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Saco & Biddeford Savi…Martin's Point Health…Sam L Cohen FoundationElmina B Sewall Found…Maine Community Found…The Bank of America C…American Online Givin…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Saco & Biddeford Savings Charitable FoundationME15.7× affinity5 shared granteesties to 9 of 9Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Saco & Biddeford Savings Charitable Foundation · Martin's Point Health Care Inc · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Portside Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Portside Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 8 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2021, released 2021. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $54k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2021, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Portside’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home