· Private foundation
The Edith Carell Johnson 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
89% of The Edith Carell Johnson Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Community Foundation For Nantucket Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year The Edith Carell Johnson Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $439k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k5 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $250k+1 grant · $400k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $400,000 |
| NANTUCKET CONSERVATION FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| CHEEKWOOD | $5,333 |
| NASHVILLE SYMPHONY | $3,000 |
| SEWANEE THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH | $2,500 |
| ST CECILIA CONGREGATION | $2,500 |
| SOUTH CUMBERLAND COMMUNITY FUND | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 31% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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.
12 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2020, 6 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
Vanderbilt University4× · 2019–2022 · $1.8M · revenue +57%- NCNANTUCKET CONSERVATION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2018–2023 · $171k · revenue +166%
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY2× · 2019–2025 · $36k · revenue +33%
Funded once
- HCHARPETH CONSERVANCYgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue +351%
- NZNASHVILLE ZOO INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue +51%
- TETHE ENSWORTH SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $1k · revenue +101%
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.
To preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
The nantucket historical association preserves and interprets the history of nantucket through its programs, collections, and properties, in order to promote the island's significance and foster an appreciation of it among all audiences.
Natural History Institute is organized to provide leadership and resources for a revitalized practice of natural history that integrates art, science, and humanities to promote the health and well-being of humans and the rest of the…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Kennebunk Land Trust's mission is to permanently conserve and steward land to benefit natural and human communities.
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
Nashville public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
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…
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
The organization's primary mission is conserving land where people and nature can thrive by creating green corridors linking existing public lands using conservation easments and outright purchase.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nantucket Conservation Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 22 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 Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds Community Foundation for Nantucket Inc ↗
- Who funds NANTUCKET CONSERVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GIVE AND GO INC ↗
- Who funds NANTUCKET LAND & WATER COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CUMBERLAND COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds HARPETH CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds THE LAND TRUST FOR TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ENSWORTH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NANTUCKET YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION 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: The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Hunt Family Foundation of Nashville · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Msb Cockayne Fund Inc · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn 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 Edith Carell Johnson 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.
- Community Foundation for Nantucket Inc — 10% of income from government
- Nantucket Conservation Foundation Inc — 4% 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 Edith Carell Johnson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Edith Carell Johnson 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.