· Private foundation
The Christopher W Schlesinger 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 $10k12 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MARION INSTITUTE | $10,500 |
| WESTPORT FOOD PANTRY | $6,000 |
| BUZZARDS BAY COALITION | $5,250 |
| NEW BEDFORD LIGHT INC | $4,500 |
| WESTPORT LAND TRUST | $2,500 |
| FUTURE CHEFS | $2,000 |
| HOPE & MAIN | $2,000 |
| ONLY A CHILD | $2,000 |
| OUR SISTERS SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| NARROWS CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $1,000 |
| RAINBOW RAILROAD | $1,000 |
| MSPCA | $250 |
| PAN-MASS CHALLENGE | $200 |
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, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 13% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
18 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 1 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; $1k 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
BUZZARDS BAY COALITION6× · 2020–2025 · $24k · revenue +88%- OSOUR SISTERS SCHOOL7× · 2017–2025 · $21k · revenue +52%
- WFWESTPORT FOOD PANTRY INC5× · 2021–2025 · $18k · revenue +17%
Funded once
FORGE CITY WORKS INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +214%- GBGREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INCone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue +1%
- CECOMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CENTER OF SOUTHEASTERN MAone grant, 2022 · $2k
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.
To harness the power of food innovation and markets to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals by supporting efforts to make alternative proteins accessible, affordable, and delicious.
We envision a food system that reflects the diverse communities of our region in leadership, ownership, and priorities. all farmers lowers barriers to enable refugee and immigrant farmers to grow resilient community farms through access to…
The greater chicago food depository is the nonprofit food bank serving cook county. our mission - is to end hunger. we believe food is a basic human right. to achieve our mission, we work in partnership with a network of community-based…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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 organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Our mission is to solve hunger in central pennsylvania by ensuring that everyone struggling with hunger has access to enough wholesome food every day. we will achieve this bold goal with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and…
Commonwealth care alliance, inc.'s mission is to improve the health and well-being of people with significant needs by innovating, coordinating and providing the highest quality, individualized care.
Ceres is a nonprofit advocacy organization working to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more just, and resilient world. through education and research, we make the business case for action on the most pressing sustainability…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Driven by the belief that access to healthy food is a basic right for all people, feeding westchester leads hunger action programs and mobilizes the resources needed to eradicate hunger in westchester county.
Massachusetts taxpayers foundation provides public & private sector decision makers with accurate, timely, unbiased research & constructive solutions that drive public policy in order to strengthen the state's finances & position the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Third Sector New England Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 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 36 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 10% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 30 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 BUZZARDS BAY COALITION ↗
- Who funds OUR SISTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FORGE CITY WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds NEW BEDFORD LIGHT ↗
- Who funds THE MARION INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE & MAIN ↗
- Who funds ONLY A CHILD INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FIDALGO ISLAND ROTARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RAINBOW RAILROAD USA INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds SOMERVILLE HOMELESS COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds REHEARSAL FOR LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds NARROWS CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE GENESIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE LIVESTOCK INSTITUTE OF SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds PAN-MASSACHUSETTS CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 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 Joan Shafran and Rob Haimes Foundation Inc · Southcoast Community Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Bristol County Savings Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Christopher W Schlesinger 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.
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- Somerville Homeless Coalition Inc — 31% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Rehearsal for Life Inc — 11% of income from government
- Cambridge Community Center Inc — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Narrows Center for the Arts Inc — 5% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Marion Institute Inc — 1% of income from government
- Forge City Works Inc — 1% of income from government
- Our Sisters School — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge 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 Christopher W Schlesinger Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Christopher W Schlesinger 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.