· Private foundation
Shea Family 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BETHANY HEALTH CARE | $4,500 |
| ST PATRICKS MANOR | $4,500 |
| ANGELL ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER | $4,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,500 |
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 (FY20–23, $117k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% 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 +47% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 30 since wound down; 2 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, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k 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
BOSTON HEALTH CARE FOR THE HOMELESS PROGRAM INC2× · 2021–2022 · $100k · revenue +62%
MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS3× · 2021–2023 · $43k · revenue +49%- FMFERREN MEMORIAL INC2× · 2020–2021 · $18k · revenue +185% · 68% of their budget
Funded once
- BMBOSTON MEDICAL CENTER PAUL BOWMAM MEMORIAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $45k
- NENEW ENGLAND LIFE FLIGHT INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue +41%
- MEMGH - ELAINE CONNOLLY KIDNEY CANCER RESEARCH FUND (DR XIN GAO)one grant, 2021 · $25k
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.
Our costs consist of acquiring, sorting and distributing food to 617 member agencies, transportation and logistics, and community outreach to 69 direct distribution sites such as gbfb mobile markets, and federal distributions for low…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Our mission is to continue to develop and operate a permanent year-round market in boston and to support the farmers, fishers, and entrepreneurs who grow, catch, and produce local food, and to nourish our community with food and…
To provide objective and impartial research and policy analysis in order to promote more efficient, effective and responsible government for the city of boston.
Neighborhealth's mission is to promote and sustain healthy communities, families, and individuals by providing accessible, person-centered, and compassionate, high-quality health care services to all who live and work in our service area,…
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
The mission of the massachusetts nonprofit network is to unite and strengthen the nonprofit sector in the commonwealth through public policy, public awareness, and capacity building services.
Macp's stated mission is to promote job stabilization and growth across the full spectrum of business, and within all geographic regions of the commonwealth through working in partnership with business and government. macp's main priority…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Patrick's Manor Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Edmands Park Incorporated. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 11% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 94 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 BOSTON HEALTH CARE FOR THE HOMELESS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND LIFE FLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds FERREN MEMORIAL INC ↗
- Who funds NORWOOD LITTLE LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds CARITAS COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds ST MARK'S SCHOOL OF SOUTHBOROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds ONSET BAY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Gillys House Inc ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Swampscott Youth Baseball Inc ↗
- Who funds Camp for All Kids ↗
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 · Arbella Insurance Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Cambridge Savings Charitable Foundation Inc · Salem Five Charitable Foundation Inc · Citizens Charitable Foundation · The Bay State Federal Savings Charitable Foundation · Massachusetts Bankers Association Charitable Foundation Inc · The New England Patriots Charitable Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Amica Companies 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 Shea Family 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.
- Walpole Community Food Pantry Inc — 37% of income from government
- St Patrick's Manor Inc — 16% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program Inc — 8% of income from government
- New England Life Flight Inc — 5% of income from government
- Chinese Culture Connection Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 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 Shea Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Shea Family 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.