· Private foundation
The Casco 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MAINE CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURS | $9,000 |
| UPSTART MAINE | $7,500 |
| COASTAL ENTERPRISES INC | $7,000 |
| THOMAS COLLEGE | $5,500 |
| CENTRAL MAINE COMMUNITY BETTERMENT COLLABORATIVE | $4,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MAINE FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC | $3,500 |
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 (FY22–23, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 50% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 The Casco Foundation’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, 97% of the giving stays in ME; read by stated purpose it is 92% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +90% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MCMAINE CENTER FOR ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT DBA MAINE CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURS8× · 2018–2025 · $43k · revenue +147%
- CECOASTAL ENTERPRISES INC8× · 2018–2025 · $35k · revenue +208%
- TCTHOMAS COLLEGE8× · 2018–2025 · $29k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- PFPLAY FOR PEACEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +29%
- MHMAINE HEALTH INNOVATION CENTERone grant, 2023 · $5k
- CPCREATIVE PORTLAND CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +66%
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.
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
Maine & Company is a private, non-profit business development sales organization. Its purpose is to improve Maine's success in attracting new business and expanding and retaining existing business by providing a focused, statewide sales…
The mission of the Maine Development Foundation is to foster sustainable, long-term economic growth for Maine. Its programs stimulate new ideas, help develop Maine's leaders, and provide common ground for solving problems and advancing…
Fork Food Lab is a nonprofit food business incubator and shared commercial kitchen focused on growing the local food economy. We support the growth of sustainable Maine-based businesses by providing entrepreneurs with work space,…
Maine MEP's mission is to facilitate economic development by providing the necessary services to Maine's small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMES) to enable them to be resilient and thrive in the ever-changing market…
Support and promote the University of Maine Graduate & Professional Center ("Maine Center") of the University of Maine System through fundraising, marketing, and engagement with Maine enterprises and employers to identify and address…
To champion college and career readiness and strive to increase the educational attainment of the Maine workforce.
The Growth Council was established to foster a robust regional economy in a collaborative manner in a mult-town community.
The Institute, through a public and private partnership, shall encourage, promote, stimulate and support research and development activity leading to the commercialization of new products and services in Maine's technology-intensive…
To create a bright economic future for our community by investing in the education of our youth and by harnessing the recreational assets of our region
To mobilize, engage and nurture broad investment from our diverse community to enhance the programs, equipment and facilities of Eastern Maine Community College.
Maine initiatives, a fund for change, cultivates social, economic, and environmental justice through grants and other support to grassroots organizations in maine communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Upstart Maine Inc and the most unlike its peers is Play for Peace. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 20 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 MAINE CENTER FOR ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT DBA MAINE CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURS ↗
- Who funds COASTAL ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds THOMAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UPSTART MAINE INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC ↗
- Who funds STARTUP MAINE INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER PORTLAND IMMIGRANT WELCOME CENTER ↗
- Who funds University of Maine Foundation ↗
- Who funds CIEE Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL MAINE COMMUNITY BETTERMENT COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Maine Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PLAY FOR PEACE ↗
- Who funds Four Directions Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE PORTLAND CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Unity Environmental University ↗
- Who funds NEW HAMPSHIRE WOMEN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VENTURE HALL ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR A STRONG MAINE ECONOMY ↗
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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Machias Savings Bank Community Development Foundation · Bill and Joan Alfond Family Foundation · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · Maine Technology Institute · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Casco 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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 Casco Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Casco 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.