· Private foundation
Richard K & Nancy L Donahue 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: 48% of RICHARD K & NANCY L DONAHUE 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 $10k11 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $360k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $230k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JFK LIBRARY | $75,000 |
| PROJECT LEARN | $55,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL ADMIN ASSOC | $50,000 |
| NEQM | $50,000 |
| WHISTLER HOUSE MUSEUM | $45,000 |
| LOWELL FESTIVAL FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| GIRLS INC OF GREATER LOWELL | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| MERRIMACK REPERTORY THEATRE | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| LASELL UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| MERRIMACK VALLEY FOOD BANK | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| LOWELL COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER | $20,000 |
| MILL CITY GROWS | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $653k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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.
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 +53% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
59 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 32 since wound down; 5 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $95k 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
- UIUTEC Inc6× · 2017–2023 · $3.2M · revenue +162%
MASSACHUSETTS DOWN SYNDROME CONGRESS INC4× · 2018–2022 · $2.8M · revenue +153% · 57% of their budget- PLPROJECT LEARN INC5× · 2018–2025 · $780k · revenue +153% · 55% of their budget
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER LOWELL INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $1.0M · revenue +103%
- GLGREATER LOWELL FAMILY YMCAgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $250k · revenue +31%
- MGMASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITALone grant, 2020 · $100k
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.
Lowell telecommunication corporation's mission is to strengthen the city of lowell as a community media and education center that empowers, connects, and informs all residents, businesses, and organizations in the city. ltc provides…
Lowell makes is a collection of open workshops and laboratories where members and students can collaborate to learn, share, and hone crafts of all kinds. the focus is on providing a space for education, entrepreneurship, and engagement…
To sustain a strategic alliance of community organizations that improves the overall health and wellness of those living in the greater lowell region. by raising awareness and providing resources for our communities, schools, civic and…
The massachusetts legal assistance corporation provides leadership and support to improve civil legal services to low-income people in massachusetts through collaboration with the legal services community, the legislature, the public, the…
Massachusetts education and career opportunities, inc. (massedco, inc.) is a statewide network of service sites that provides education and career advising to over 12,000 low-income, first generation individuals each year. massedco…
We create opportunities for the people of massachusetts to transform their lives and build a more equitable commonwealth through the humanities.
The mission of The Lowell Plan, Inc. is (1) to facilitate and advocate for transformative data-driven change through big-picture, forward thinking visioning and collaboarive strategic planning; and (2) to foster collaboration across…
To provide a significant unified voice in shaping the future growth of the business communities which it serves and to provide a vehicle through which individuals can work to improve the area's business climate and quality of life. A…
We work to ensure that individuals with disabilities can live independently as equal members of society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lowell Community Health Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Durkin Foundation Inc. 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 40 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 114 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 UTEC Inc ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS DOWN SYNDROME CONGRESS INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Lowell Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Merrimack Repertory Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds LASELL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER LOWELL INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT LEARN INC ↗
- Who funds JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY LIBRARY FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INC ↗
- Who funds MERRIMACK VALLEY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds LOWELL HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds ACRE FAMILY CHILD CARE INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER LOWELL FAMILY YMCA ↗
- Who funds Real News Project Inc ↗
- Who funds LOWELL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds Community Teamwork Inc ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds THE LOWELL FESTIVAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MILL CITY GROWS INC ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGE UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds MIDDLESEX COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION C/O JACKSON CHEGE ↗
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: Greater Lowell Community Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Aubert J Fay Charitable Fund · We Share A Common Thread Foundation Inc · Demoulas Foundation · Theodore Edson Parker Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · The Battles Foundation Inc · Greater Lowell Health Alliance Chna 10 Inc · Salem Five Charitable Foundation Inc · Trustees of the Ayer Home · The Saab Family 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 Richard K & Nancy L Donahue 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.
- Nashua River Watershed Assoc Inc — 54% of income from government
- Cultural Organization of Lowell Inc — 52% of income from government
- Lowell Association for the Blind Inc — 49% of income from government
- Utec Inc — 46% of income from government
- Acre Family Child Care Inc — 45% of income from government
- Lowell Community Health Center Inc — 34% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell Inc — 27% of income from government
- International Institute of New England Inc — 24% of income from government
- Community Teamwork Inc — 23% of income from government
- United Way of Massachusetts Bay Inc — 23% of income from government
- Greater Lowell Community Foundation Inc — 18% of income from government
- The Megan House Foundation Inc — 15% of income from government
- The Lowell Festival Foundation — 12% of income from government
- Angkor Dance Troupe Inc — 10% of income from government
- Mill City Grows Inc — 7% of income from government
- The Lowell General Hospital — 5% of income from government
- Project Learn Inc — 5% of income from government
- Lasell University — 4% of income from government
- Merrimack Valley Food Bank Inc — 3% of income from government
- Girls Incorporated of Greater Lowell — 3% of income from government
- New England Quilt Museum Inc — 3% of income from government
- Merrimack Repertory Theatre Inc — 2% of income from government
- House of Hope Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Filmmakers Collaborative Inc — 1% 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 Richard K & Nancy L Donahue Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Richard K & Nancy L Donahue 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.