· Private foundation
Sholley 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k52 grants · $99k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC | $30,000 |
| COMMONWEALTH SHAKESPEARE COMPANY INC | $20,000 |
| WEST FALMOUTH LIBRARY INC | $10,000 |
| COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE FDN INC | $8,500 |
| THEATER OFFENSIVE INC | $5,000 |
| FALMOUTH ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| HIGHFIELD HALL & GARDENS | $5,000 |
| ST MICHAEL'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $4,500 |
| ASHMONT HILL CHAMBER MUSIC INC | $3,500 |
| NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL ACHIEVE | $3,000 |
| YEAR UP INC | $3,000 |
| FRIENDS OF CULEBRA ANIMALS INC | $2,500 |
| BOWDOIN COLLEGE | $2,500 |
| PRO PUBLICA INC | $2,500 |
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 (FY20–25, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 62% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +27% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
72 repeat relationships — 48 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 7 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- TCThe Commonwealth Shakespeare Co Inc7× · 2019–2025 · $114k · revenue +41%
BUZZARDS BAY COALITION7× · 2019–2025 · $59k · revenue +83%- CCCOOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE FOUNDATION INC5× · 2021–2025 · $53k · revenue +61%
Funded once
- MBMARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORYone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +7%
- NNNEFA NEW ENGLAND FDN FOR THE ARTS INCone grant, 2024 · $4k
- CCCOOLIDGE CORNER THEATREone grant, 2020 · $4k
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.
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…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
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.
New england law/boston dedicates itself to preparing students to be successful lawyers and leaders in the public and private sectors through integrated practical, theoretical and ethical education of the highest caliber and to contributing…
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
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.
Seeks to expand the boundaries of theater, producing, performing and presenting works of literary, experimental and educational value. provide a home for outstanding artists, a training ground for young artists (including an extensive…
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.…
Emmanuel college is a coed, residential catholic liberal arts and sciences college with 2,112 undergraduate and graduate students.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Our Sisters School and the most unlike its peers is Soumyas Journey Foundation. 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 34 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
81 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. 81 of the 106 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 The Commonwealth Shakespeare Co Inc ↗
- Who funds BUZZARDS BAY COALITION ↗
- Who funds COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WEST FALMOUTH LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE THEATER OFFENSIVE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MOUNTS BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CULEBRA ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds BANCROFT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LEAGUE OF MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds SUITS FOR SENIORS INC ↗
- Who funds Bowdoin College ↗
- Who funds PRO PUBLICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE EPIPHANY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds VASSAR COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds THE CERES COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Captain Forbes House Museum ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE BOSTON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILTON LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MILTON ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY IN TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds DANA HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SALT POND AREAS BIRD SANCTUARIES INC ↗
- Who funds MASS GENERAL BRIGHAM INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BERKSHIRE WALDORF SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLLEGE LIGHT OPERA COMPANY INC ↗
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 · Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Inc · Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick Trust · The Feigenbaum Foundation Inc · The Buchwald Family Foundation · Dr Robert C & Tina Sohn Foundation · Martha's Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Foundation · Lee Bank Foundation Inc · Janey Fund Charitable Trust · Eastern Bank Foundation · Cape Cod Foundation 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 Sholley 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.
- Captain Forbes House Museum — 100% of income from government
- New England Forestry Foundation Inc — 88% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- Berkshire Grown Inc — 28% of income from government
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% of income from government
- Marine Biological Laboratory — 20% of income from government
- Community Servings Inc — 12% of income from government
- Courageous Sailing Center for Youth Inc — 10% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood of Southern New England Inc — 10% of income from government
- Volunteers in Medicine-Berkshires Inc — 10% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Greenagers Inc — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Huntington Theatre Co Inc — 4% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Inc — 3% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- West Falmouth Library Inc — 2% of income from government
- Community Access to the Arts Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Theater Offensive Inc — 2% of income from government
- Martha's Vineyard Film Society Inc — 2% of income from government
- Berkshire Natural Resources Council Inc — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Guthrie Center Corp — 1% of income from government
- Edith Wharton Restoration Inc — 1% of income from government
- Shakespeare & Company Inc — 1% of income from government
- Circuit Arts Inc — 1% of income from government
- Healing Meals Foundation Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Year Up Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Epiphany School Inc — 0% of income from government
- Our Sisters School — 0% of income from government
- Emerson College — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 0% of income from government
- Milton Academy — 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 Sholley Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sholley 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.