How much does The Compass Fund give?

The Compass Fund reported 65 grants totaling $425,587 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 10 and 64 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Compass Fund fund?

By grant dollars over FY2018 to FY2025, its largest causes are Education (40%), Environment (25%), Health (11%).

Who are The Compass Fund's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2018 to FY2025: Governor Dummer Academy the Governor's Academy ($398k), Granite State Woodland Institute ($90k), Lawrence Boys & Girls Club Inc ($72k).

Does The Compass Fund fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 36% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Compass Fund accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Compass Fund?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include French Fdn Tr Udecl, Gateway Fund 7522-Xxxxxx00049, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

Where is The Compass Fund based?

The Compass Fund is based in NH.

The Compass Fund

The Compass Fund at a glance

· 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.

$426k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$58k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2018 to 2025.

Education$718kEnvironment$441kHealth$199kYouth Development$94kAnimals$76kHuman Services$60kFood & Nutrition$57kReligion$38kOther$0

02FY2025 · 65 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k48 grants · $148k
$10k–50k16 grants · $220k
$50k–250k1 grant · $58k

$3,587

Median grant

States reached

$6.1M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY	$58,000
NH TIMBERLAND OWNERS EDUCATION FOUNDATION	$25,000
THE BLUEFIN COLLABORATIVE	$20,000
LAWRENCE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS INC	$20,000
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE	$20,000
VERMONT FORESTRY FOUNDATION	$15,000
DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE	$15,000
BROOKS SCHOOL	$15,000
THE COTTING SCHOOL	$10,000
TURNING POINT USA	$10,000
REAL AMERICAN HARDWOOD COALITION	$10,000
TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION	$10,000
HARTWICK COLLEGE	$10,000
PROCTOR ACADEMY	$10,000
SOUTHEAST LAND TRUST OF NH	$10,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.6M · 76 repeat orgs$184k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +25% since the first grant, against +16% for those 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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.6M

$110k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+25%

+16%

Still filing today

67%

66%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EnvironmentEducationHealthHuman ServicesPhilanthropyArts & CultureOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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 ACADEMY
7× · 2018–2025 · $398k · revenue +25%
GS
GRANITE STATE WOODLAND INSTITUTE
6× · 2018–2024 · $90k · revenue +172%
LAWRENCE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB INC
7× · 2018–2025 · $72k · revenue +73%

Funded once

TF
TRUST FOR PUBLIC LANDS VERMONT
one grant, 2022 · $11k
RA
REAL AMERICAN HARDWOOD COALITION
one grant, 2021 · $10k
BS
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INCgraduated
one grant, 2021 · $6k · revenue +30%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Native Plant Trust Inc

The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.

Environment

Harvard Conservation Trust

To preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.

Environment

Trustees of Dartmouth College

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.

Education

Wildlands Trust Inc

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…

Environment

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Northeast College of Health Sciences

Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.

Education

Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation

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.

Environment

President and Trustees of Bates College

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…

Education

Saint Anselm College

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…

Education

United States Naval Institute

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.

—

University of New Haven

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…

Education

Wentworth Institute of Technology Inc

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…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New England Forestry Foundation Inc; 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.

04the grantee network

80 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

77/80

Grantees still filing

54/80

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Education$652,800Other$567,537Environment$267,500Health$84,800Philanthropy$74,500Youth Development$72,000Animals$60,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

French Fdn Tr UdeclPA47.2× affinity20 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Compass Fund funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Compass Fund. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

14get no government money at all

10report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

1rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Compass’ filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home