· Private foundation
The Aksel Nielsen 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k38 grants · $118k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAMP AVODA | $60,000 |
| NATIONAL SPORTS CENTER FOR THE DISABLED | $40,000 |
| GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA | $6,000 |
| TEMPLE BETH SHALOM | $5,168 |
| CASA MYRNA VAZQUEZ | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| WESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST | $5,000 |
| ACLU | $5,000 |
| THE TREVOR PROJECT | $5,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $5,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE RESERVATION | $5,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE | $5,000 |
| JCRC JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS COUNCIL | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +39% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 6 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- NSNATIONAL SPORTS CENTER FOR THE DISABLED INC9× · 2017–2025 · $360k · revenue +59%
- CACAMP AVODA INC9× · 2017–2025 · $335k · revenue +79%
- DDDENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUE3× · 2017–2019 · $65k · revenue +254%
Funded once
Legal Aid at Workgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +121%- CMColorado Museum of Natural Historygraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +26%
- TBTHE BOSTON FOUNDATION-COVID-19 RESPONSE FUNDone grant, 2020 · $5k
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.
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The westport library was established for the purpose of maintaining a public library in the town of westport, connecticut. the library is committed to empowering the individual and strengthening the community through dynamic interaction…
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 wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Massachusetts Association for Mental Health Inc and the most unlike its peers is Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc. 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 48 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) — 5% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 66 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 NATIONAL SPORTS CENTER FOR THE DISABLED INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP AVODA INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT RIVER WATERSHED ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH HEALTHCARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds CASA MYRNA VAZQUEZ INC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds TREVOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS ASSOCIATION FOR MENTAL HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND INNOCENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds VETERANS INC ↗
- Who funds K9S FOR WARRIORS INC ↗
- Who funds SHALOM AUSTIN ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CENTRAL PARK EAST HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid at Work ↗
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 · Eastern Bank Foundation · United Way Worldwide · The Gertler Clark Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · The Rhode Island Community Foundation · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · Fidelity Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The US Charitable Gift Trust
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 Aksel Nielsen 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.
- Veterans Inc — 58% of income from government
- Family Health Center of Worcesterinc — 39% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Jewish Healthcare Center Inc — 15% of income from government
- New England Innocence Project — 12% of income from government
- Sudbury Valley Trustees Inc — 11% of income from government
- Casa Myrna Vazquez Inc — 5% of income from government
- Needham Community Council Inc — 2% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- K9S for Warriors 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 Aksel Nielsen Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Aksel Nielsen 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.