· Private foundation
The Access Strategies Fund
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $7k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $260k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN MA | $110,000 |
| THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND | $50,000 |
| RESIST | $35,000 |
| ARISE | $30,000 |
| RIGHT TO THE CITY ALLIANCE | $30,000 |
| NEIGHBOR TO NEIGHBOR | $30,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN MA | $30,000 |
| MASS SENIOR ACTION COUNCIL | $30,000 |
| PIONEER VALLEY PROJECT | $30,000 |
| WORCESTER INTERFAITH INC | $25,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS VOTER EDUCATION | $20,000 |
| RESIST | $2,500 |
| MASSACHUSETTS VOTER EDUCATION | $2,500 |
| HAYMARKET PEOPLE'S FUND | $1,000 |
| CHINESE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATION | $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 (FY17–24, $37k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 27% of The Access Strategies Fund’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, 85% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 90% — more 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +108% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 7 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, 39% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $176k 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
THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC4× · 2017–2024 · $72k · revenue +44%- RIRESIST INC6× · 2018–2024 · $49k · revenue +931%
- URURBAN REVIVAL INC2× · 2021–2023 · $6k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- BEBLACK ECONOMIC JUSTICE INSTITUTE IN Cone grant, 2017 · $6k · revenue -72%
- CCOSECHAone grant, 2017 · $2k
EAST BOSTON SOCIAL CENTERS INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $1k · revenue +178%
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 mission of the massachusetts nonprofit network is to unite and strengthen the nonprofit sector in the commonwealth through public policy, public awareness, and capacity building services.
Aclu foundation of ma was established to defend freedoms guaranteed in the constitution and bill of rights through public education and litigation.
The corporation is organized to improve the quality of life in bostons urban communities by building capacity, environmental health, and providing economic opportunity in a manner that responds directly to community needs, interests, and…
Maha breaks down barriers facing first-time and first-generation home buyers and owners through education, counseling, advocacy, and grassroots organizing.
Lwvma, a nonpartisan organization, encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
To foster a movement of systemic change to advance equity and inclusion in winchester and beyond.
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
The mission of the volunteer lawyers project of the boston bar association is to increase access to justice by delivering high quality pro bono civil legal services to eligible clients in the greater boston area.
Massachusetts education and career opportunities, inc. (massedco, inc.) is a statewide network of service sites that provides education and career advising to over 12,000 low-income, first generation individuals each year. massedco…
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Labor United Inc and the most unlike its peers is Worcester Interfaith 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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 33 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds RESIST INC ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Voter Education Network Inc ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS SENIOR ACTION COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds RIGHT TO THE CITY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds PIONEER VALLEY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ARISE INC ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER INTERFAITH INC ↗
- Who funds SOLIDAGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR LABOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN REVIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK ECONOMIC JUSTICE INSTITUTE IN C ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds CHINESE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD MASSACHUSETTS CHAPTER INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LABOR UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds BRAZILIAN WOMEN'S GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds DUDLEY STREET NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN RESOURCE WORKSHOP INC ↗
- Who funds EAST BOSTON SOCIAL CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds HAYMARKET PEOPLE'S FUND INC ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds LA COLABORATIVA INC ↗
- Who funds AYNI INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTHBUILD GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES FOR COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRO PRESENTE 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: The Hyams Foundation Inc · Barr Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Center for Economic Democracy Inc · Third Sector New England Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Solidago Foundation · Herman and Frieda L Miller Foundation · Haymarket People's Fund Inc · Proteus Fund Inc · Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation · The Lenny Zakim 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 The Access Strategies Fund 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.
- Youthbuild Global Inc — 69% of income from government
- East Boston Social Centers Inc — 50% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Resist Inc — 2% of income from government
- Brazilian Women's Group Inc — 0% of income from government
- Asian American Resource Workshop Inc — 0% of income from government
- Community Labor United 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 The Access Strategies Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Access Strategies Fund 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.