· Private foundation
Ruth Lepson Charitable Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAVE THE CHILDREN | $668 |
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 (FY20–20, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 17% of Ruth Lepson Charitable Foundation Inc’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. Read by recipient address, 58% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 42% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +57% since the first grant, against +54% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2022, 11 since wound down.
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 FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
HIMALAYAN CATARACT PROJECT INC3× · 2017–2021 · $9k · revenue +233%- MFMERCY FOR ANIMALS INC3× · 2017–2021 · $7k · revenue +106%
Save The Children Federation Inc2× · 2021–2022 · $2k · revenue +1%
Funded once
- HWHumane World for Animals Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +46%
United States Association for UNHCRgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +54%
FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +361%
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.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Animal outlook is a national animal protection organization working to end the abuse of farmed animals using a variety of strategies, including investigations, legal advocacy, corporate and food system reform, and vegan outreach.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Our mission is to build a movement of global citizens whose actions will help achieve our vision of a world without extreme poverty.
We exist to end the abuse of animals raised for food. this mission is executed by persuading companies and institutions to adopt animal welfare policies through negotiation and pressure campaigns, and then holding them accountable to their…
Rockefeller philanthropy advisors aims to accelerate philanthropy in pursuit of a just world
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of the World Food Program Inc and the most unlike its peers is Humane World for Animals 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 20 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 OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds HIMALAYAN CATARACT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY FOR ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds United States Association for UNHCR ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds GLOUCESTER WRITERS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds EDVESTORS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds American Civil Liberties Union Foundation ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Ruth Lepson Charitable Foundation Inc 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Gloucester Writers Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Edvestors Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.