· Public charity
The Association for Rural and Small Libraries
Arsl builds strong communities through advocacy, professional development, and elevating the impact of rural and small libraries.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 49 grants below total $591,054 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $724,688 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $133,634 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 $10k12 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k37 grants · $511k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Town of Rockingham | $15,000 |
| Somesville Library Association | $15,000 |
| Olive G Pettis Memorial Library | $15,000 |
| Moultonborough Public Library | $15,000 |
| Cook Memorial Library | $15,000 |
| Wells River Library Association | $15,000 |
| Town of Plainville | $15,000 |
| Cutler Memorial Library | $15,000 |
| Town of Holbrook | $15,000 |
| WTA Hansen Memorial Library | $15,000 |
| China Library Association | $15,000 |
| Town of Voluntown | $15,000 |
| Town of Webster | $15,000 |
| Orford Social Library | $15,000 |
| Town of Monkton | $15,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY22–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 88% of your 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.
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.
5 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 44 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, 12% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $522k went to new ones.
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
- RMRUSSELL MEMORIAL LIBRARY2× · 2022–2024 · $30k
- CMCUTLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY2× · 2022–2024 · $30k · revenue +25%
- TOTOWN OF BERNARDSTON2× · 2022–2024 · $26k
Funded once
- PPPIERMONT PUBLIC LIBRARYone grant, 2022 · $17k
- BMBixby Memorial Free Librarygraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +31%
- CLCASCO LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +114%
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 Quechee Library serves as a public library and freely provides access and materials for information, lifelong learning, entertainment, and reflection, as well as programs to foster community and engagement.
The Public Library of New London is a private, not-for-profit institution that serves the needs of the New London community by providing free access to diverse ideas and information through a variety of library materials, services, and…
Public Library providing books and computer network to the public
To provide library services to local area residents.
Public Library
The library was established to provide public access to various published mediums, including books, periodicals, reference materials, and various audiovisual materials.
The mission of the Mountain Lakes Free Public Library is to provide free access to books, periodicals, magazines, audio, video, digital and internet media
To provide and maintain a public library which provides free services and programming to the residents of Bowdoinham (pop. c. 3000), lends books and other media, offers educational and reading programs for children, youth and people of all…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greensboro Free Library and the most unlike its peers is China Library Association 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 30 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 89 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 CUTLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds ORFORD SOCIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Bixby Memorial Free Library ↗
- Who funds CASCO LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds D A HURD PUBLIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ARVIN A BROWN PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds SOMESVILLE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHINA LIBRARY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WELLS RIVER LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE HARRISON VILLAGE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE HOBBS MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds WHITEFIELD LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Buck Memorial Library ↗
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: Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation Inc · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Center for Technology and Civic Life · The Vermont Community Foundation · Maine Humanities Council · Davis Family Foundation · Vermont Humanities Council · Vermont Afterschool Inc · Vermont Council on the Arts Inc · New Hampshire Charitable Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Association for Rural and Small Libraries 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.
- Cutler Memorial Library — 12% of income from government
- Bennington Free Library — 3% of income from government
- Peacham Library Inc — 1% of income from government
- Greensboro Free Library — 1% of income from government
- Craftsbury Public Library Inc — 0% of income from government
- Lincoln Library Inc — 0% of income from government
- Bixby Memorial Free Library — 0% of income from government
- Norman Williams Public Library 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.