· Private foundation
The David S Howe 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $50k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $305k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $940k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART 21 INC | $225,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| BLOCK ISLAND HOUSING INITIATIVE | $200,000 |
| CENTER FOR HEIRS PROPERTY PRESERVATION | $100,000 |
| BLOCK ISLAND HEALTH SERVICES | $65,000 |
| NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER | $50,000 |
| INCREASING HOPE | $50,000 |
| FREED SEED FEDERATION | $50,000 |
| PROTOCINEMA | $40,000 |
| NOFAMASS | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| CAF AMERICA | $25,000 |
| WESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC | $25,000 |
| WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC | $25,000 |
| COASTAL FOODSHED | $25,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $185k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +37% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down; 4 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- AIART21 INC6× · 2020–2025 · $675k · revenue +94%
- CFCenter for Heirs' Property Preservation5× · 2020–2025 · $300k · revenue +234%
- FSFreed Seed Federation Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $255k · revenue +46% · 69% of their budget
Funded once
- TCTHE CHARLENE Y WANG CHARITABLE TRUSTone grant, 2022 · $3.3M · revenue -63% · 100% of their budget
- TOTHE OPPORTUNITY CENTER INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $150k · revenue +34% · 28% of their budget
- BMBLUE MTNS PROJ DBA THE SHANDAKEN PROJECTone grant, 2021 · $30k
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 open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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.
Our mission is to act to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take into account human needs.
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
White columns identifies significant emerging and under-represented visual artists and encourages their creative and professional development through the presentation of group and solo exhibitions, an online curated artists registry, and…
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
See schedule oustelecom exists to ensure members can compete, grow and thrive to build a world where families, enterprises and communities are connected through the power of broadband.our member companies have committed a considerable…
Making the web work for everyone. W3C brings together global stakeholders to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web that connects and empowers humanity.
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
The mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
Vision: drive positive change through the power of design and focused activism.mission: aia inspires and empowers architects to improve society and transform the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is We the Protesters Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Charlene Y Wang Charitable Trust. 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 30 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 51% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 48 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 THE CHARLENE Y WANG CHARITABLE TRUST ↗
- Who funds ART21 INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds Center for Heirs' Property Preservation ↗
- Who funds Block Island Housing Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds Freed Seed Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE OPPORTUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Increasing HOPE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED WE DREAM NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds PROTOCINEMA INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST ORGANIC FARMING ASSOCIATION MA CHAPTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLOCK ISLAND HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds LAND FOR GOOD INC ↗
- Who funds MAINE ORGANIC FARMERS AND GARDENERS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BLACK BALL PROJECTS-NFP INC ↗
- Who funds COASTAL FOODSHED ↗
- Who funds GALAPAGOS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds CIVIL RIGHTS CORPS ↗
- Who funds FILM FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds BLANK FORMS INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN SERVICES COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds STO TE NEMA Inc ↗
- Who funds THE EYEBEAM ATELIER INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOMFIELD-GARFIELD CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT PROJECT 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: Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture · William E Schrafft and Bertha E Schrafft Charitable Trust · The Ford Foundation · Tides Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Network for Good · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 David S Howe 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.
- Coastal Foodshed — 66% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Westport Historical Society Inc — 1% 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 David S Howe Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The David S Howe 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.