· Private foundation
Stephen D and Susan W Paine 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREAT DIXTER CHARITABLE TRUST | $5,000 |
| BOSTON BALLET | $5,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| VERMONT CENTER FOR ECOSTUDIES | $2,500 |
| ENROOT | $1,000 |
| MASS MOCA | $1,000 |
| BOSTON CHILDREN'S CHORUS | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES | $1,000 |
| MANOMET | $1,000 |
| UNICEF USA | $500 |
| THE WOMEN'S LUNCH PLACE | $500 |
| COTTING SCHOOL | $500 |
| PROJECT STEP | $500 |
| VNA CARE NETWORK & HOSPICE | $500 |
| CAMBRIDGE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $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 (FY19–25, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 33% 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.
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 +65% since the first grant, against -18% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC2× · 2023–2024 · $350k · revenue +26%
BOSTON BALLET INC7× · 2019–2025 · $23k · revenue +56%- TVTHE VERMONT CENTER FOR ECOSTUDIES INC7× · 2019–2025 · $18k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- POPROPRIETORS OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUMone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue -18%
- TUTUFTS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEone grant, 2019 · $600
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.
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 Boston Public Library provides educational and cultural enrichment free to all by engaging the public through programming and active spaces, restoring and preserving our history, providing access to borrow from our vast collection of…
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.…
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
Presenting orchestra classical music to underserved communities. Our mission is to make great music accessible to diverse audiences and to harness the power of music to forge lasting relationships with our community.
Central square theater, the oldest female-led theater organization in greater boston, is an innovator in the non-profit arts field in collaborative leadership. cst engages over 35,000 people annually through live performance, rigorous…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
The boston public library fund provides financial support to the boston public library (bpl), ensuring that it remains viable, engaging, accessible, and free to all. the library fund fulfills this mission by working in partnership with…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boston Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Cambridge Homes. 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 52 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 39 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 SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds PROPRIETORS OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM ↗
- Who funds BOSTON BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE VERMONT CENTER FOR ECOSTUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MANOMET INC ↗
- Who funds ENROOT INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CHILDREN'S CHORUS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S LUNCH PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds 152 COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COTTING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BRATTLE FILM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Project STEP Inc ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PINE STREET INN INC ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CAMBRIDGE HOMES ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION FOR THE HUMANITIES & PUBLIC POLICY INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY TO FAMILY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BE HEARDWORLD INC ANNA MYER AND DANCERS INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILYAID BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds The Cambridge Historical Society ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
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 · Eastern Bank Foundation · Stevenson Family Charitable Trust · Alchemy Foundation · Middlecott Foundation · Ploughshares Foundation · Barr Foundation · The Louis Foundation · M Holt Massey Charitable Trust · Robert and Iris Fanger Family Foundation · Cambridge Community Foundation · Adelard & Valeda Roy 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 Stephen D and Susan W Paine 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.
- Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities & Public Policy Inc — 45% of income from government
- Massachusetts Historical Society — 22% of income from government
- Be Heardworld Inc Anna Myer and Dancers Inc — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Manomet Inc — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Cambridge Historical Society — 11% of income from government
- Women's Lunch Place Inc — 8% of income from government
- The Vermont Center for Ecostudies Inc — 4% of income from government
- Familyaid Boston Inc — 4% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- Boston Children's Chorus Inc — 2% of income from government
- Brattle Film Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Boston Ballet Inc — 0% of income from government
- Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum — 0% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- Cotting School Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation 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 Stephen D and Susan W Paine Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Stephen D and Susan W Paine 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.