· Private foundation
Ray of Hope 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $175k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Northeastern University | $1,000,000 |
| STARability Foundation | $125,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Maine | $50,000 |
| University Southern Maine Foundation | $10,000 |
| SNIP Collier Inc | $10,000 |
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 (FY19–22, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 50% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 47% of Ray of Hope 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.
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.
8 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 6 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, 15% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.0M 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
- SFSTARABILITY FOUNDATION INC4× · 2022–2025 · $475k · revenue +290%
- BBBig Brothers Big Sisters of Southern ME4× · 2020–2025 · $152k · revenue +18%
- TWTHE WISDOM OF HEALING SCHOOL INC2× · 2023–2024 · $10k · revenue +9%
Funded once
- MMaineHealthgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $19k · revenue +80%
- CLCHAI LIFELINE INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +13%
TRAVIS MILLS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +19%
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 enhance, every day, the health of our patients, our families and our communities. We do that through a range of health care services for people of all ages, in a variety of care settings.
Role models (bigs) in one-to-one friendships in seven counties throughout Eastern, Coastal, and Central Maine. They partner with parents, in conjunction with over 30 schools and hundreds of volunteers and generous partners in our community…
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Brighton marine, inc. provides military and veteran families with comprehensive campus-based quality health care, as well as affordable and supportive housing for at-risk veterans and their families.
Maine Behavioral Healthcare provides a seamless and compassionate continuum of care through a community of providers collaborating to promote recovery and the overall mental and physical well-being of those we are privileged to serve.
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustfulenvironment through the expertise, commitment, and compassion ofour family of caregivers.
Community Health and Nursing Services (CHANS) provides home health andcommunity health promotion services in Brunswick, Bath, andsurrounding communities.
The University of New England prepares students to thrive in a rapidly-changing world and, in so doing, to improve the health of people, communities, and our planet.
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Maine creates, finds and supports programs that directly improve the health and well being of children statewide; provides affordable home away from home lodging which increases access to medical care for…
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustful environment through the expertise, committment, and compassion of our family of caregivers.
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustfulenvironment through the expertise, commitment and compassion of ourfamily of caregivers.
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustfulenvironment through the expertise, commitment and compassion of ourfamily of caregivers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Center for Grieving Children and the most unlike its peers is Snip Collier Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 21 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 NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds STARABILITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern ME ↗
- Who funds MaineHealth ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds TRAVIS MILLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Southern Maine Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR GRIEVING CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF BA BRUNSWICK ↗
- Who funds PREBLE STREET ↗
- Who funds Greater Boston Real Estate Board Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE WISDOM OF HEALING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds SNIP Collier Inc ↗
- Who funds Safe Passage ↗
- Who funds ROYAL RIVER CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Texas Instruments Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Ray of Hope 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.
- Northeastern University — 7% 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.