· Private foundation
The Brennan Family Foundation
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 $10k15 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $175k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $118k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELIH FOUNDATION | $66,500 |
| HOLY SPIRIT CATHOLIC CHURCH (FAITH DIRECT) | $51,200 |
| BARUCH COLLEGE | $44,650 |
| BAPTIST HEALTH FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| THE LITTLE CLUB SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC | $20,000 |
| RC CHURCH OF SACRED HEART | $20,000 |
| CAST | $15,000 |
| VIRGINIA PIEDMONT HERITAGE AREA ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| PECONIC BAY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SACRED HEART PARISH | $10,000 |
| SUNY MARITIME COLLEGE | $8,000 |
| AMERICA'S ROUTES | $5,000 |
| THE NEW YORK YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION | $2,500 |
| ST STEPHEN THE MARTYR CHURCH | $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 (FY17–21, $37k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 96% 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 +92% since the first grant, against +46% for the ones you funded once.
60 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 6 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $137k 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
- VPVIRGINIA PIEDMONT HERITAGE AREA ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $103k · revenue +38%
- BHBethesda Hospital Foundation Inc7× · 2017–2023 · $80k · revenue +186%
- TNTHE NAVAL INSTITUTE FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $58k · revenue +139%
Funded once
- NHNORTHWELL HEALTH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -12%
- TFTRUST FOR THE NATIONAL MALLone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -39%
- NWNAVAL WAR COLLEGE FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -42%
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.
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…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
York school is an award-winning, private, coed college-prep school for grades 8-12, that develops confident and authentic leaders. we offer an academically challenging experiential program for bright, kind, and driven students in an…
To provide students with the knowledge, skills, ethical values needed for a career in law.
To inform and enrich the intellectual lives of 20,000 alumni of harvard university in the washington, dc area and to assist harvard university with respect to applicants and undergraduates from the dc area.
Since 1775, the mission of Hampden-Sydney College has been to form good men and good citizens in an atmosphere of sound learning.
To preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Berkeley Carroll School and the most unlike its peers is Citizens for Fauquier County. 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 35 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
71 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. 71 of the 121 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 VIRGINIA PIEDMONT HERITAGE AREA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Bethesda Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NAVAL INSTITUTE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GETTYSBURG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION OF SOUTHOLD TOWN INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD SHEPHERD SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Good Shepherd Christian School ↗
- Who funds THE LITTLE CLUB SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds NORTHWELL HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUST FOR THE NATIONAL MALL ↗
- Who funds NAVAL WAR COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH ↗
- Who funds THE PIEDMONT ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL SPORTING LIBRARY AND MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Students for Life of America Inc ↗
- Who funds RIDGEFIELD ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN KINDERGARTEN SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GOOSE CREEK ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE SKIN CANCER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CRC RECOVERY FOUNDATION 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 Luminescence Foundation Inc · Dun Foundation · William M Backer Foundation Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Awa Family Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · The Principato Family Foundation Inc · The Seilheimer Foundation · Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Bessemer Giving 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 Brennan Family 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.
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Nantucket Historical Association — 1% of income from government
- Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc — 1% 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 Brennan Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Brennan Family 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.