· Private foundation
Sharp Charitable Trust
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.
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 · FY2024
- Under $10k35 grants · $76k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $52k
- $250k+2 grants · $710k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MIT PRESS FUND FOR THE FUTURE | $460,000 |
| THE TERMEER FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| CANCER ENGINEERING WORKSHOP AT NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENSES | $52,000 |
| ELIOT CHURCH OF NEWTON | $15,000 |
| ROSIE'S PLACE | $5,000 |
| THE FRIENDLY KITCHEN | $5,000 |
| ASPEN CANCER CONFERENCE INC | $5,000 |
| MUSTARD SEED COMMUNITY HEALTH | $5,000 |
| SCIENCE HISTORY INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| OPEN MEDICINE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CONGREGATIONAL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BOSTON'S HOMELESS | $5,000 |
| LIFE SCIENCES CARES | $3,500 |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY FOOD AND FUEL ALLIANCE | $3,000 |
| THE SECOND STEP INC | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $23k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 9% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 64% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $310k 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
- WIWHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH8× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +131%
- UCUNION COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY2× · 2017–2018 · $1.0M · revenue +58%
- OMOPEN MEDICINE FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $40k · revenue +107%
Funded once
- PAPHILLIP AND ANN SHARP LIFE SCIENCES FELLOWSHIP FUNDone grant, 2021 · $5.0M
- UOUNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS - PHILLIP & ANN SHARP CANCER CENTERone grant, 2022 · $2.0M
- MMMIT MUSEUM AT KENDALL EXHIBITIONSone grant, 2019 · $1.5M
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 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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Massbio is committed to advancing massachusetts' leadership in the life sciences to grow the industry, add value to the health care system and improve patient lives.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is More Than Words Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dreamfar High School Marathon. 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 38 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 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.
41 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. 41 of the 86 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 WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds UNION COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE TERMEER INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS BIOTECHNOLOGY EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OPEN MEDICINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BOSTON'S HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds Greensboro Independent School Corp ↗
- Who funds MUSTARD SEED COMMUNITY HEALTH ↗
- Who funds HUNGER MOUNTAIN CHILD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE HISTORY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDLY KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE SECOND STEP INC ↗
- Who funds LIFE SCIENCE CARES INC ↗
- Who funds ASPEN CANCER CONFERENCE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds DOWNEAST COASTAL CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE NEWTON FREE LIBRARY ↗
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: Eastern Bank Foundation · National Life Group Charitable Foundation Inc · Bny Mellon Charitable Gift Fund · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc
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 Sharp Charitable Trust 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.
- Central Vermont Adult Basic Education Inc — 75% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- The Second Step Inc — 26% of income from government
- More Than Words Inc — 24% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- The Broad Institute Inc — 19% of income from government
- Hunger Mountain Child Center Inc — 10% of income from government
- Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research — 7% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place 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 Sharp Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Sharp Charitable Trust 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.