· Private foundation
Mellen Charitable Fdn (Fka Tf Fdn)
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 FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k2 grants · $400k
- $250k+15 grants · $35M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEROME AVENUE FUND CO THE BOSTON FOUNDATION | $25,047,906 |
| DANA-FARBER INC | $4,060,000 |
| SOCIAL FINANCE | $1,000,000 |
| UPSTREAM USA | $1,000,000 |
| YEAR UP INC | $540,000 |
| FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY | $537,000 |
| YOUTH VILLAGES | $500,000 |
| MILFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $445,500 |
| ST VINCENT'S MEDICAL CENTER | $425,000 |
| WALTHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $402,750 |
| DUET INC | $300,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA - MA | $250,000 |
| CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER | $250,000 |
| HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN | $250,000 |
| NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM | $250,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $2.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 64% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Mellen Charitable Fdn (Fka Tf Fdn)’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. Read by recipient address, 92% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 82% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
11 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 4 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.1M 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
- FPFOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC3× · 2022–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +49%
YOUTH VILLAGES INC2× · 2023–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +41%- HFHORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN3× · 2022–2024 · $750k · revenue +27%
Funded once
JEWISH VOCATIONAL SERVICE INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue +38%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEFone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue -21%- SBSAINT BONIFACE HAITI FOUNDone grant, 2021 · $250k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
The university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
Primary functions are the coordination and delivery of health care resources and services, health care education for the hospital service area, long range analysis of health care needs and development of programs, and arranging for…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
As the parent entity of a blended health organization, highmark health seeks to improve the health and well-being of the people and communities it serves by providing affordable, accessible and high-quality healthcare.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
Ahip is the national trade association representing the health insurance industry. ahip's members provide health care coverage, services and solutions to more than 200 million americans. we are committed to market-based solutions and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Teach for America Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 19 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 DANA-FARBER INC ↗
- Who funds Upstream USA Inc ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds St Vincent's Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTH VILLAGES INC ↗
- Who funds Social Finance Inc ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds JEWISH VOCATIONAL SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds DUET INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
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: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Mellen Charitable Fdn (Fka Tf Fdn) 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.
- Jewish Vocational Service Inc — 39% of income from government
- Horizons for Homeless Children — 21% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Social Finance Inc — 12% of income from government
- Upstream Usa Inc — 4% of income from government
- Year Up 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.
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How do I get to Mellen Charitable Fdn (Fka Tf Fdn)?
Find your warmest path to Mellen Charitable Fdn (Fka Tf Fdn) 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.