· Private foundation
The Compass Fund
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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k48 grants · $148k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $220k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $58k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY | $58,000 |
| NH TIMBERLAND OWNERS EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE BLUEFIN COLLABORATIVE | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE | $20,000 |
| LAWRENCE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS INC | $20,000 |
| DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE | $15,000 |
| BROOKS SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| VERMONT FORESTRY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| TURNING POINT USA | $10,000 |
| REAL AMERICAN HARDWOOD COALITION | $10,000 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC | $10,000 |
| PROCTOR ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BIG ISLAND POND | $10,000 |
| SOUTHEAST LAND TRUST OF NH | $10,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY18–25, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 86% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
76 repeat relationships — 52 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 12 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k 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
GOVERNOR DUMMER ACADEMY THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY7× · 2018–2025 · $398k · revenue +25%- GSGRANITE STATE WOODLAND INSTITUTE6× · 2018–2024 · $90k · revenue +134%
LAWRENCE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB INC7× · 2018–2025 · $72k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- TFTRUST FOR PUBLIC LANDS VERMONTone grant, 2022 · $11k
- RAREAL AMERICAN HARDWOOD COALITIONone grant, 2021 · $10k
- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $6k · revenue +30%
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 organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
To preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Northeast wilderness trust is a regional land trust working to preserve and restore forever-wild landscapes for nature and people in new york, vermont, new hampshire, maine, massachusetts and connecticut.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
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…
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…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New England Forestry Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Granite State Woodland Institute. 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 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
80 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. 80 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 GOVERNOR DUMMER ACADEMY THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds GRANITE STATE WOODLAND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds LAWRENCE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds BROOKS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE BLUEFIN COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds COTTING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds REAL AMERICAN HARDWOOD COALITION ↗
- Who funds Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire ↗
- Who funds Hartwick College ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BIG ISLAND POND ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ESSEX COUNTY GREENBELT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds THE ALBANY ACADEMIES INC ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds WINDRUSH FARM THERAPEUTIC EQUITATION INC ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds HOWL FOR WILDLIFE INC ↗
- Who funds PISCATAQUOG LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROCTOR ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds EDGEWOOD SENIOR SOLUTIONS GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND FORESTRY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RUNWAY FOR RECOVERY INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL CHILDREN'S CANCER SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds Forest Society of Maine ↗
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: French Fdn Tr Udecl · Gateway Fund 7522-Xxxxxx00049 · New Hampshire Charitable Foundation · Fidelity Foundation · Davis Conservation Foundation · Eastern Bank Foundation · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Adelard & Valeda Roy Foundation · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Fields Pond Foundation 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 Compass Fund 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.
- New England Forestry Foundation Inc — 88% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc — 42% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% of income from government
- Essex County Greenbelt Association — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Governor Dummer Academy the Governor's Academy — 1% of income from government
- Lazarus House Inc — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Cotting School 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.