· Private foundation
The Elsie Procter Van Buren 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $3k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $295k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GIVE DIRECTLY | $30,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $30,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $30,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF TUFTS COLLEGE-CTR FOR EXPDG VIEWPOINTS | $25,000 |
| MASS INC | $25,000 |
| RHODE ISLAND COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $20,000 |
| THE GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK | $20,000 |
| VERMONT FOOD BANK | $20,000 |
| JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF AMERICA | $15,000 |
| ATRIUM SCHOOL ATRIUM FUND | $15,000 |
| NORTHEAST WILDERNESS TRUST CORP | $15,000 |
| NEW BEDFORD LIGHT | $10,000 |
| EVERYDAY BOSTON | $10,000 |
| COMBINED JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES | $10,000 |
| JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS COUNCIL | $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 (FY18–22, $135k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 81% 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 +59% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
59 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 51 since wound down; 8 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, 64% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $103k 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
Feeding America6× · 2019–2025 · $300k · revenue +77%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC5× · 2020–2025 · $155k · revenue +21%- GBGREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC7× · 2018–2025 · $155k · revenue +84%
Funded once
- CPCATHERINE & PHIL BYE'S DONOR ADVISED FUNDone grant, 2022 · $3.7M
- GGGround Game Fundone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue -56%
- CFCENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTSone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue -1%
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.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
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.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
Conservation law foundation, inc. (clf) protects new england's environment for the benefit of all people and future generations. we use the law, science, and markets to create solutions that preserve and restore our natural resources,…
Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
The mission of the global alliance for improved nutrition (gain) is to improve the consumption of healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable, by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and sustainability of…
Iatp works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Delivering Good Inc and the most unlike its peers is Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
93 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. 93 of the 129 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 Feeding America ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY FINANCE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds RHODE ISLAND COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL REDISTRICTING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ground Game Fund ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARYLAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR DISASTER PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GIVEDIRECTLY INC ↗
- Who funds Everyday Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds DC Greens Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW GEORGIA PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds FEED THE CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL RELIEF TEAMS ↗
- Who funds RIDESHARE 2 VOTE AWARE ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds THE DC CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LAWYERS FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds CORRECTIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS ↗
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: Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Jewish Communal Fund · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Greater Washington Community Foundation · New Venture Fund · Tides Foundation · The Robert Wood Johnson 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 Elsie Procter Van Buren 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.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Vermont Foodbank — 13% of income from government
- New England Innocence Project — 12% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% of income from government
- Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program Inc — 8% of income from government
- Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation — 2% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% of income from government
- Documentary Educational Resources Inc — 1% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Global Empowerment Mission Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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 Elsie Procter Van Buren Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Elsie Procter Van Buren 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.