· Private foundation
Sand Dollar W Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
98% of Sand Dollar W Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 9 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Sand Dollar W Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 17 organizations, $135k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k17 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $98k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SCARBOROUGH LAND TRUST | $37,500 |
| MIDDLESEX SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| THE FESSENDEN SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| MAINE ISLAND TRAIL ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| RHODE ISLAND LAND TRUST COUNCIL | $10,000 |
| ROCA KIDZ CLUB | $8,853 |
| US COURT TENNIS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION (PDP) | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| MILLBROOK SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| ST BERNARD'S SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL OF MAINE | $2,500 |
| PROUT NECK ASSOCIATION | $2,500 |
| POMFRET SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| ST MICHAELS COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| THE US JESTERS CLUB | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 63% 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.
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.
44 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2023, 28 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2024, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- TFTHE FESSENDEN SCHOOL7× · 2017–2024 · $124k · revenue +9%
Maine Island Trail Association7× · 2017–2023 · $45k · revenue +65%- MCMOMENTUM CONSERVATION5× · 2017–2022 · $26k · revenue +554%
Funded once
Portland Museum of Artgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $12k · revenue +33%
COMMUNITY SERVINGS INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue +72%- SLSCARBOUROUGH LAND TRUSTone grant, 2017 · $5k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
See schedule oustelecom exists to ensure members can compete, grow and thrive to build a world where families, enterprises and communities are connected through the power of broadband.our member companies have committed a considerable…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United South End Settlements and the most unlike its peers is American Museum of Natural History. 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 39 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
76 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. 76 of the 112 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds THE FESSENDEN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Maine Island Trail Association ↗
- Who funds MOMENTUM CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds MIDDLESEX SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MILLBROOK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE ALLIANCE FOR CHILDREN FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES COURT TENNIS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Natural Resources Council of Maine Inc ↗
- Who funds Portland Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds PROUTS NECK ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD PEDIATRICS ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ST BERNARD'S SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds KEY WEST LITERARY SEMINAR INC ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SERVINGS INC ↗
- Who funds ST MICHAEL'S COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds NEWPORT COUNTY REGIONAL YMCA ↗
- Who funds Chebeague & Cumberland Land Trust ↗
- Who funds ALEXANDER TWILIGHT ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds FILM FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds THE WINSOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CITYMEALS-ON-WHEELS ↗
- Who funds Maine Farmland Trust ↗
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: Boston Foundation Inc · The Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · The One by One Project Inc · Allen & Franka Charlupski Foundation · Grayson Family Foundation · John Sage Foundation · The Orchard Foundation · Fields Pond Foundation Inc · The Royal Little 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 Sand Dollar W 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.
- Waltham Boys & Girls Club Inc — 29% of income from government
- Community Servings Inc — 12% of income from government
- Rehearsal for Life Inc — 11% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Steps to Success Inc — 5% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Inc — 3% of income from government
- Food for Free Committee Inc — 3% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- The Fessenden School — 0% of income from government
- Steppingstone Foundation 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Sand Dollar W Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sand Dollar W 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.