· Private foundation
The Common Sense Fund Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k3 grants · $95k
- $50k–250k35 grants · $2.7M
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUND | $1,018,000 |
| SCHWAB CHARITABLE FUND | $150,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE CT INC | $100,000 |
| SAVE THE SOUND | $100,000 |
| PEOPLES ACTION FOR CLEAN ENERGY | $100,000 |
| INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS | $100,000 |
| THE HESCHEL CENTER FOR SUSTAINABILITY | $100,000 |
| NATURAL CAPITALISM SOLUTIONS | $100,000 |
| ACADIA CENTER | $100,000 |
| STUTTERING ASSOCIATION FOR THE YOUNG | $95,000 |
| HARTFORD PERFORMS | $90,000 |
| MAKING BOOKS SING | $80,000 |
| THE CONNECTICUT NEWS PROJECT INC | $75,000 |
| GROUNDSWELL | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $75,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 80% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 75% of The Common Sense Fund Inc’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, 35% of the giving stays in CT; read by stated purpose it is 17% — 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 +77% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $122k 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
- ICINSIDE CLIMATE NEWS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $800k · revenue +465%
SUSTAINABLE CT INC7× · 2018–2024 · $690k · revenue +49%- STSAVE THE SOUND8× · 2017–2024 · $590k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- THThe Heschel Center for Environmentalone grant, 2017 · $95k
- EFECSU FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2017 · $75k · revenue +14%
- OVOhel Ve Leah Foundation Incone grant, 2021 · $60k
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.
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
To produce bold theatre experiences that reach across artistic, physical and social boundries. We aim to increase empathy and open-mindedness by illuminating nuanced perspectives and unspoken truths behind the salient issues of our time.…
Climate group advances climate action by mobilizing business and government leadership to drive systemic decarbonization across energy, transport, and industry, while engaging the public through large-scale convenings and global platforms.…
Grist is an independent, non profit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
To launch breakthrough climate mitigation efforts by identifying, supporting, and unleashing innovative leaders with transformative strategies.
Supporting industry transformation towards climate-positive and make green careers transitions and driving the adoption of green workforce development practices broadly.
Canary Media is an independent, nonprofit newsroom covering the transition to clean energy.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
ACT leads the just, equitable and rapid transition to a clean energy future and diverse climate economy.
To bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
Climate advocates voces unidas (cavu) inspires local solutions to the climate crisis via visual storytelling and youth education programs.
Our mission is to facilitate culturally responsive, multidisciplinary art programs for students, teaching artists, and communities to develop and amplify their voices and creative skills.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girl Be Heard Institute and the most unlike its peers is The Gunk Foundation. 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 23 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 67 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 PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Natural Capitalism Solutions Inc ↗
- Who funds INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE CT INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE SOUND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF YEDIDIM ↗
- Who funds MUSIC HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds CO LAB THEATER GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CLAY ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GLASSROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds HARTFORD PERFORMS INC ↗
- Who funds STUTTERING ASSOCIATION FOR THE YOUNG INC ↗
- Who funds Peoples Action for Clean Energy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT PUBLIC BROADCASTING INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL BE HEARD INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Making Books Sing Inc DBA New York City Childrens Theater ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ORCHESTRATING DREAMS INC ↗
- Who funds ARTS IGNITE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS IN ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE SCIENCE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND ↗
- Who funds OUR CLIMATE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds INTERTWINE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE FRIDAY INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds SPRING STREET CLIMATE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT NEWS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CHARTER OAK TEMPLE RESTORATION ASSOC D/B/A CHARTER OAK CULTURAL CENTER ↗
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 New York Community Trust · The Hyde and Watson Foundation · Hartford Foundation for Public Giving · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · The Ford Foundation · J Walton Bissell Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut Inc · Lily Auchincloss Foundation Inc · Connecticut Humanities Council Inc · United States Energy Foundation · Tides Foundation · Hispanic Federation Inc
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 Common Sense Fund Inc 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.
- Community Partners in Action Inc — 90% of income from government
- Real Art Ways Inc — 38% of income from government
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Music Haven Inc — 15% of income from government
- Glassroots Inc — 5% of income from government
- Greenwich Alliance for Education Inc — 3% of income from government
- Hartford Performs Inc — 3% of income from government
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% 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.