· Private foundation
Tern 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 $10k38 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $121k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HERITAGE MUSEUM AND GARDENS INC | $60,000 |
| BERKSHIRE BOTANICAL GARDENS | $45,132 |
| ASOCIATION TO PRESERVE CAPE COD | $38,000 |
| ASOCIATION TO PRESERVE CAPE COD | $23,000 |
| SUMMER OF SASS | $15,000 |
| COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL (NRDC) | $5,000 |
| THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLANDFUTURE CHEFS | $3,500 |
| PAYOMET PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | $2,500 |
| WGBH | $2,500 |
| 909 WBUR | $2,500 |
| WCAI CAPE & ISLANDS NPR STATION | $2,500 |
| CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES | $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 (FY21–25, $34k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 9% of Tern Foundation’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.
35 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 13 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, 48% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $131k 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
MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INC7× · 2019–2025 · $309k · revenue +16%- ATASSOCIATION TO PRESERVE CAPE COD INC6× · 2020–2025 · $135k · revenue +97%
- FAFINE ARTS WORK CENTER IN PROVINCETOWN INC5× · 2019–2025 · $64k · revenue +48%
Funded once
- BCBREWSTER CONSERVATION TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +32%
- TFTHE FILM COLLABORATIVE INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +117%
- H(HEET (HOME ENERGY EFFICIENCY TEAM)one grant, 2019 · $1k
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.
To encourage and assist in the acquisition, preservation and management of open space on cape cod
Conservation and preservation of land.
The orleans conservation trust protects and restores natural lands- for people and wildlife, the health of our waters, and the character of our community. a private nonprofit organization, the trust acquires and manages land to enhance…
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…
To provide the general public with woodland trails through a wildlife sanctuary in a natural state for their appreciation and enjoyment
Land conservation
Preservation and conservation of open space in harwich, massachusetts
Overview - founded in boston by pioneering landscape architect and open space visionary charles eliot in 1891, the trustees is the nation's first and the commonwealth's largest conservation and preservation nonprofit.
To preserve and protect westport massachusetts natural resources for people and nature, and to educate the public about the wise use of natural resources.
Hilltown land trust conserves and stewards land through strong relationships to ensure clean water, wildlife habitat, climate resilience, recreational opportunities, and healthy farmland for the benefit of all.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Heritage Museums and Gardens Inc and the most unlike its peers is Natural Resources Defense Council 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 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 58 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 MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION TO PRESERVE CAPE COD INC ↗
- Who funds WELLFLEET PRESERVATION HALL INC ↗
- Who funds FINE ARTS WORK CENTER IN PROVINCETOWN INC ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE MUSEUMS AND GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PROVINCETOWN COMMONS INC ↗
- Who funds WILD CAREINC ↗
- Who funds WELLFLEET HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MUJERES UNIDAS AVANZANDO INC ↗
- Who funds THE LILY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SPONTANEOUS CELEBRATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds BARNSTABLE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds ZUMIX INC ↗
- Who funds TRURO CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT CASTLE HILL INC ↗
- Who funds HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds PEAKED HILL TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER OF SASS INC ↗
- Who funds BREWSTER CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS FOUNDATION OF CAPE COD ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds GROW NATIVE MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE EASTHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds PROVINCETOWN ART ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CARRIE A SEAMAN ANIMAL SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FUND FOR ANIMAL WELFARE INC ↗
- Who funds THE FILM COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ARTISTS FOR HUMANITY 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: Mutual Bancorp Foundation Inc Fka Cape Cod 5 Foundation Inc · Cape Cod Foundation Inc · Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Trust · The Alvan G & Carol J Lampke Family Foundation · Edward Bangs Kelley and Elza Kelley Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Treved Foundation Inc · Seamens Long Point Charitable Foundation Inc · Bilezikian Family Foundation Inc · Gramercy Park Foundation Inc · Horizon Foundation Inc · Impactassetsinc
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 Tern 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.
- Association to Preserve Cape Cod Inc — 100% of income from government
- Mujeres Unidas Avanzando Inc — 44% of income from government
- Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Inc — 27% of income from government
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Helping Our Women Inc — 14% of income from government
- The Lily House Inc — 13% of income from government
- Provincetown Community Compact Inc — 9% of income from government
- Brewster Conservation Trust — 8% of income from government
- The Arts Foundation of Cape Cod — 6% of income from government
- Spontaneous Celebrations Inc — 5% of income from government
- Zumix Inc — 5% of income from government
- Barnstable Land Trust Inc — 4% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Grow Native Massachusetts Inc — 3% of income from government
- Worcester County Horticultural Society — 2% of income from government
- Artists for Humanity Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Orion Society Inc — 2% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wellfleet Preservation Hall Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wellfleet Historical Society Inc — 0% of income from government
- Provincetown Commons Inc — 0% of income from government
- Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oregon State University Foundation — 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 Tern Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Tern 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.