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Massachusetts · Public charity

Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum

The mission of the boston athenaeum is to engage all who seek knowledge by making accessible our library's collections and spaces, thereby inspiring reflection, discourse, creative expression, and joy.

$7k
Granted FY2020
1
Itemized grants FY2020
1
Organizations funded FY2020
0%
First-time grantees FY2020
Read the full brief
Itemized, FY2020
$5k
The rest is grants the schedule does not break out
Median grant, FY2020
$5,000
Largest grant, FY2020
$5,000
Organizations funded a year
1 to 1
FY2017 to FY2020
States reached, FY2020
1
Total assets, FY2020
$139M

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2020, 0% of the organizations Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2020, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20201$5k0%
FY20191$5k0%
FY20181$5k0%
FY20171$5kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2020.

Arts & Culture$20k

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2020, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Massachusetts Historical Society$20,00040%

Compare Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum with peer funders

About Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum

How much does Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum give?
Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum reported 1 itemized grants totaling $5,000, out of $6,500 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2020 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 1 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2020.
What does Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2020, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (100%).
Who are Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2020: Massachusetts Historical Society ($20k).
Does Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum fund new organizations?
In FY2020, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Where is Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum based?
Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum is based in MA.

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 1 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 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $12k 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 FY2020, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

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More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
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The regranting layer
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The camps
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By state
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