· Private foundation
The Dwyer Foundation
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
- Under $10k21 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $56k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $51k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOSTON COLLEGE | $50,955 |
| ESPERANZA ACADEMY INC | $17,086 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS | $14,546 |
| BOSTON POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE | $14,280 |
| THE GOVENORS ACADEMY | $10,206 |
| OUR LADY'S SCHOOL | $5,800 |
| INVEST IN OTHERS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $5,181 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| OUR LADY OF HOPE | $5,000 |
| LAST HOPE K9 RESCUE | $3,925 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $3,100 |
| PAN MASS CHALLENGE | $1,796 |
| SAN DIEGO ZOO | $1,202 |
| MAKE A WISH | $1,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE RESERVATIONS | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 20% of The Dwyer Foundation’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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 27 since wound down; 9 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $250k · revenue +70%- BBBIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS INC5× · 2017–2021 · $233k · revenue +24%
ESPERANZA ACADEMY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $232k · revenue +492%
Funded once
- TLThe Light Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $12k · revenue +52%
- TETELLURIDE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +299%
- YVYOUTH VILLAGES OF MASSACHUSETTSone grant, 2017 · $5k
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 mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Mass general brigham incorporated is developing an integrated health care delivery system throughout the region that offers patients a continuum of coordinated, high-quality care.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
The mission of the broad institute is to propel progress in biomedicine, through research aimed at the understanding and treatment of disease and the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the scientific community to benefit the public.…
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
To advance medical knowledge, to develop and maintain the highest professional and ethical standards of medical practice and health care, and to promote medical institutions formed on liberal principles for the health, benefit, and welfare…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
To educate the public, media and members of the legislative, veterinary, and medical profession of medical advancement from animal research.
To accelerate the development of breakthrough discoveries that will transform the lives of people living with food allergies.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Helen Dalelio Family Foundation Inc. 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 41 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
58 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. 58 of the 97 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 TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds ESPERANZA ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds GOVERNOR DUMMER ACADEMY THE GOVERNOR'S ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds PAL OF MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds RADY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds JUST IN TIME FOR FOSTER YOUTH ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Light Foundation ↗
- Who funds SCHOLAR ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds INVEST IN OTHERS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TELLURIDE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGE JACKSON ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds LAST HOPE K9 RESCUE LTD ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds PAN-MASSACHUSETTS CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICIANS OF INDIAN ORIGIN ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES OF SPINAL MUSCULAR ATROPHY DBA CURE SMA ↗
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: Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Highland Street Connection and Subsidiaries · Essex County Community Foundation Inc · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Gardner Family Charitable Foundation · The Quaker Hill Foundation Inc · Fidelity Foundation · Yawkey Foundation II · Aaf Charitable Foundation · Rockland Trust - Blue Hills Charitable 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 Dwyer 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.
- Joslin Diabetes Center Inc — 35% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- The Celebrity Series of Boston Inc — 3% of income from government
- Peabody Essex Museum Inc — 3% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Essex County Community Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Special Olympics Massachusetts Inc — 1% of income from government
- Governor Dummer Academy the Governor's Academy — 1% 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 Dwyer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Dwyer 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.