· Private foundation
South Meadow 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 $10k6 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $145k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GERMANTOWN FRIENDS SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| THE BIKER HUB | $25,000 |
| ROSENWALD PARK CAMPAIGN | $25,000 |
| SOUTHERN VERMONT ART CENTER | $25,000 |
| VYCC | $20,000 |
| CENTURION | $15,000 |
| SOLOMON WRIGHT PUBLIC LIBRARY | $10,000 |
| RVC FRIENDS OF MLK | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| ST JEROME INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| PARK-MCCULLOUGH HOUSE | $2,000 |
| FUND FOR N BENNINGTON | $2,000 |
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 (FY21–22, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% 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 +49% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 4 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $34k 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
- VYVERMONT YOUTH CONSERVATION CORPS INC3× · 2019–2022 · $150k · revenue +107%
- BHBIKE HUB4× · 2022–2025 · $130k · revenue +41% · 28% of their budget
- NBNORTHERN BERKSHIRE COMMUNITY COALITION INC2× · 2019–2020 · $50k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- TGTHE GRATEFUL BENNINGTON FUNDone grant, 2021 · $25k
- RPROSENWALD PARK CAMPAIGNgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +184%
- HVHENRY VARNUM POOR FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
Vermont public informs, educates, and entertains through public service journalism and enlightening content rooted in vermont. our storytelling enriches lives and fosters community connection and understanding.
Protect land along rivers, lakes and wetlands of vt; protect public access, wildlife habitat, scenic natural beauty, and ecological integrity.
The mission of vins is to motivate individuals and communities to care for the environment through education, research, and avian wildlife rehabilitation.
To provide research and education on issues of importance to the natural, human, and economic environments of vermont citizens.
Veic is a sustainable energy company on a mission to generate the energy solutions the world needs (continues in schedule o). (continued), working to combat the climate crisis, boost community resilience, and lower energy costs. for nearly…
The vermont center for ecostudies advances the conservation of wildlife across the americas through research, monitoring, and citizen engagement.
Provide nature-based education and mentoring to youth and adults in southern vermont and western massachusetts.
Using the humanities, we connect with people across vermont to create just, vibrant, and resilient communities, and to inspire a lifelong love of learning.
Conducts and coordinates research of critical issues affecting vermonters. also conducts public opinion research.
To protect and enhance the natural resources of vermont in order to promote the well-being of present and future generations of vermonters and visitors; preserve and aid in the preservation of open land along rivers and lakes; protect and…
To sustain a sound economy and preserve vermont's unique quality of life by studying and making recommendations on statewide public policy issues.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Fund for North Bennington Inc and the most unlike its peers is Paran Recreations Inc. 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 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 27% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 60 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 VERMONT YOUTH CONSERVATION CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds BIKE HUB ↗
- Who funds SOLOMON WRIGHT PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN BERKSHIRE COMMUNITY COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds BUXTON SCHOOLINC ↗
- Who funds CENTURION MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ROSENWALD PARK CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN VERMONT ARTS CENTER INC PO BOX 617 ↗
- Who funds Shires Housing Inc ↗
- Who funds POWNAL PRESCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BENNINGTON MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds PRESERVATION TRUST OF VERMONT INC ↗
- Who funds NJTL OF BENNINGTON VT INC ↗
- Who funds ELEVATE NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ASSETS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT ARTS EXCHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR NORTH BENNINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARFAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds BACKYARD PLAYERS & FRIENDS INC ↗
- Who funds BIKES NOT BOMBS 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: Chilmark Foundation · The Vermont Community Foundation · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · Whipstock Hill Preservation Society Inc · Alcyon Foundation · Barr Charitable Trust · George W Mergens Foundation · The Windham Foundation Inc · Cleveland H Dodge Foundation Inc · Vermont Council on the Arts Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust
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 South Meadow 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.
- Shires Housing Inc — 100% of income from government
- Pownal Preschool Inc — 75% of income from government
- Vermont Youth Conservation Corps Inc — 47% of income from government
- Preservation Trust of Vermont Inc — 29% of income from government
- Solomon Wright Public Library — 14% of income from government
- Paran Recreations Inc — 12% of income from government
- Bike Hub — 3% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Bikes Not Bombs Inc — 2% of income from government
- Vermont Journalism Trust Ltd — 0% of income from government
- Pownal Rescue Squad — 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 South Meadow Foundation?
Find your warmest path to South Meadow 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.