· Public charity
Sustainable Ct Inc
To inspire, support, and certify sustainability actions by connecticut towns and cities.
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.
The 25 grants below total $192,765 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $285,266 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $92,501 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k24 grants · $178k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FARMINGTON LAND TRUST | $15,000 |
| CT RC&D | $9,000 |
| EVERYONE OUTSIDE | $7,500 |
| LITCHFIELD ARTS COUNCIL | $7,500 |
| CHICKS AHOY FARM | $7,500 |
| CITY LIGHTS & COMPANY | $7,500 |
| IQUILT PARTNERSHIP | $7,500 |
| ELLINGTON FARMERS MARKET | $7,500 |
| NEW HAVEN COALITION FOR ACTIVE TRAN | $7,500 |
| GAIAN WAY | $7,500 |
| TIME'S FOOL COMPANY | $7,500 |
| REAL FOOD CT | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| RESET | $7,500 |
| THE RISEUP GROUP | $7,500 |
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.
None of your grants could be placed against low income need for this view.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 18% of Sustainable Ct Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +30% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 14 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, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $110k 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
- TRThe Riseup Group Inc3× · 2021–2024 · $88k · revenue +311% · 27% of their budget
- BCBENINCASA COMMUNITY INC4× · 2021–2024 · $47k · revenue +118%
- CLCITY LIGHTS & COMPANY4× · 2020–2024 · $30k · revenue +85%
Funded once
- PCPTSA CONNECTICUT CONGRESSone grant, 2023 · $38k
- UMUNITED METHODIST CHURCHone grant, 2023 · $18k
- SESUSTAINABLE ESSEX DEEP RIVERone grant, 2023 · $18k
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.
We encourage Connecticut residents to participate in government and their communities and we conduct public interest lobbying to advocate for consumer and environmental concerns.
Commissions world class public artworks, programming, and events on a project by project basis in partnership with local agencies and organizations that enhance New Havens cultural heritage and diversity.
To stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening and the art of flower arranging; to aid in the protection of trees, plants, and birds; to encourage civic beautification and to instill a respect for the environment.
To provide leadership and take initiatives for locally led conservation with the goal to protect soil, water and other natural resources of north central connecticut.
To inspire, support, and certify sustainability actions by connecticut towns and cities.
Connecticut Theatre Exchange exists to bring together theatre artists from various backgrounds and identities to support their process of developing new projects and new skills in a nurturing environment that is both accessible and…
ROOTS is a community-engaged 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to promoting food security and agricultural education in K-12 programs. We make healthy food accessible and affordable to low-income families. We work with Connecticut farmers,…
Kestrel land trust conserves and cares for forests, farms, and riverways in the connecticut river valley of western massachusetts while nurturing an enduring love of the land
Save New Canaan Inc. (the Corporation) was formed to promote sustainable and appropriate development, as well as to advocate for the protection of open spaces, wetlands and other public trust goods, such as road, water and sewer…
To protect water quality and wildlife habitat in the seven-town Norwalk River Watershed
The Candlewood Valley Regional Land Trust protects open spaces that contribute to the Candlewood Valley iconic rural New England character.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greenwich Botanical Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Times Fool Company. 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 14 years old; the field is 20. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 14% of your grantees by number, and just 12% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
58 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 58 of the 108 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 Riseup Group Inc ↗
- Who funds BENINCASA COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds CITY LIGHTS & COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF EASTERN CONNECTICUT INC ↗
- Who funds NEW HAVEN ECOLOGY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EARTHPLACE INC ↗
- Who funds EAST LYME GIVING GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds VOICE OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYONE OUTSIDE ↗
- Who funds LEVO INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Chicks Ahoy Farm Inc ↗
- Who funds AVALONIA LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds WESTVILLE COMMUNITY NURSERY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR LATINO PROGRESS CONNECTICUT PUERTO RICAN FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds REAL FOOD CT ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN FAMILY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Farmington Land Trust ↗
- Who funds WEST HARTFORD ALL SPORTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds iQuilt Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds BRUCE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds TIMES FOOL COMPANY ↗
- Who funds FREE CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds MASSARO COMMUNITY FARM INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST NIGHT HARTFORD INC ↗
- Who funds NEW CANAAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT RESOURCE CONSERVATION & DEV AREA INC ↗
- Who funds CLICK 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: Hartford Foundation for Public Giving · Connecticut Humanities Council Inc · William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund · Eversource Energy Foundation Inc · In Our Backyards Inc · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · The Betty Knox Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven · The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Inc · Newalliance Foundation Inc · Edward C & Ann T Roberts Foundation · Liberty Bank 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 Sustainable Ct Inc 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.
- Mill River Collaborative Inc — 100% of income from government
- Connecticut Resource Conservation & Dev Area Inc — 100% of income from government
- New Haven - Urban Resources Initiative Inc — 100% of income from government
- IQuilt Partnership Inc — 100% of income from government
- Groundwork Bridgeport Inc — 100% of income from government
- Community Renewal Team Inc — 77% of income from government
- Emerge Connecticut Inc — 47% of income from government
- Click Inc — 44% of income from government
- Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County Inc — 41% of income from government
- Keney Park Sustainability Project — 37% of income from government
- Massaro Community Farm Inc — 27% of income from government
- Avalonia Land Conservancy Inc — 21% of income from government
- Solar Youth Inc — 19% of income from government
- Ellington Farmers Market Inc — 19% of income from government
- Real Food Ct — 17% of income from government
- Art Council of Greater New Haven Inc — 14% of income from government
- Levo International Inc — 10% of income from government
- New Haven Ecology Project Inc — 9% of income from government
- City Lights & Company — 9% of income from government
- Benincasa Community Inc — 4% of income from government
- Friends of the Litchfield Community Greenway Inc — 3% of income from government
- First Night Hartford Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Riseup Group Inc — 1% of income from government
- Bruce Museum Inc — 0% of income from government
- Connecticut Citizen Research Group 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.