· Private foundation
Stanley W Watson 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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k11 grants · $55k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $398k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $878k
- $250k+1 grant · $450k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION | $450,000 |
| MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY | $200,000 |
| COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF CAPE COD | $188,000 |
| CAPE COD HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $180,000 |
| CAPE COD YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION INC | $100,000 |
| CAPE COD HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION INC VISITING NURSE ASSOCIATION | $90,000 |
| FALMOUTH HOUSING CORPORATION | $70,000 |
| THE 300 COMMITTEE LAND TRUST | $50,000 |
| WOODWELL CLIMATE RESEARCH CENTER INC | $40,000 |
| GOSNOLD INC | $40,000 |
| FALMOUTH SERVICE CENTER INC | $35,000 |
| BUZZARDS BAY COALITION | $35,000 |
| WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION CAPE & ISLAND NPR - WCAI | $30,000 |
| FALMOUTH EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC | $30,000 |
| FALMOUTH HOUSING TRUST | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $42k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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.
38 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $154k 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
- WHWOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION5× · 2020–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +35%
- MBMARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY5× · 2020–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +27%
- CHCOMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF CAPE COD INC5× · 2020–2024 · $830k · revenue +48%
Funded once
- WFWGBH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $20k
- MKMARGARET K AND CHARLES D SPOHR CHARITABLE TRUSTone grant, 2022 · $6k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $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.
Land conservation
To encourage and assist in the acquisition, preservation and management of open space on cape cod
To provide public broadcasting to lower cape cod massachusetts
The mission of the falmouth artists guild is to promote the visual arts for the cape cod community through educational opportunities and exhibitions for all.
To enhance the quality of life of our community by inspiring lifelong learning, providing free and open access to information, and fostering community connections.
To inspire appreciation, understanding and stewardship of our natural environment through discovery and learning.
Local cable programs by and for residents.
To improve and protect the environmental health of casco bay, maine.
Preservation and Maintenance of Cape Cod National Seashore by the Organizations Volunteers.
The nantucket conservation foundation owns, protects, and stewards over 9,000 acres of land and coastal shoreline, conserves nantucket's rare and significant natural resources, and engages in impactful ecological research to inform…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Belonging to Each Other Inc and the most unlike its peers is Gosnold Inc. 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 38 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 45 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 WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF CAPE COD INC ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH HOUSING CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Cape Cod Community College Educational Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE 300 COMMITTEE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BUZZARDS BAY COALITION ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GOSNOLD INC ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH SERVICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH HOUSING TRUST ↗
- Who funds DUFFY HEALTH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Cape Cod Young Men's Christian Association Inc ↗
- Who funds PENIKESE ISLAND SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CAPE COD CHILDREN'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD FALMOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE FILM FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF NOBSKA LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAMARITANS ON CAPE COD ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC HIGHFIELD INC ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF FALMOUTH CAPE COD ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH VOLUNTEERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF FAIRWINDS INC ↗
- Who funds BELONGING TO EACH OTHER 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: Cape Cod Foundation Inc · Martha's Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation Inc · Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Trust · Mutual Bancorp Foundation Inc Fka Cape Cod 5 Foundation Inc · Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation · Eastern Bank Foundation · George H Lusk Trust · Harken Foundation · Cape & Coast Bank Foundation · Hermann Foundation Inc · Esther Simon 1952 Charitable Trust Xxxxx8006 · Lyndon Paul Lorusso Charitable Foundatio
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 Stanley W Watson 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.
- The Samaritans On Cape Cod — 82% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Duffy Health Center Inc — 51% of income from government
- Cape Cod Children's Place Inc — 47% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- Marine Biological Laboratory — 20% of income from government
- Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc — 11% of income from government
- Cape Cod Young Men's Christian Association Inc — 11% of income from government
- Community Health Center of Cape Cod Inc — 9% of income from government
- Woods Hole Film Festival Inc — 7% of income from government
- Gosnold Inc — 5% of income from government
- Historic Highfield Inc — 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.