· Private foundation
The Esta Kramer Foundation Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $119k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF KISIMANI SCHOOL | $75,000 |
| CAPITAL AREA NEW MAINERS PROJECT | $35,000 |
| SKIDOMPHA LIBRARY | $25,000 |
| ECUMENICAL FOOD PANTRY | $15,000 |
| LINCOLN ACADEMY | $14,000 |
| CHIP INC | $10,000 |
| CDA COLLABORATIVE LEARNING | $10,000 |
| HEALTHY KIDS | $10,000 |
| PHANTOM THEATER | $7,500 |
| QUILLART CENTRO CULTURAL DE ARTE | $5,000 |
| YESTERMORROW | $4,000 |
| AIO FOOD PANTRY | $3,000 |
| HEARTY ROOTS | $2,500 |
| PEACE GALLERY | $2,000 |
| STEPPING STONE HOUSING INC | $2,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 16% of those 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.
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 8% of The Esta Kramer Foundation Charitable Trust’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. Read by recipient address, 64% of the giving stays in ME; read by stated purpose it is 58% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
16 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- LALINCOLN ACADEMY2× · 2024–2025 · $24k · revenue +13%
- YIYestermorrow Inc2× · 2024–2025 · $19k · revenue +31%
- SSSTEPPING STONE HOUSING INC3× · 2022–2025 · $17k · revenue +218%
Funded once
- HUHENRY UIHLEIN II AND MILDRED Aone grant, 2024 · $50k
- CLCENTRAL LINCOLN COUNTY YMCAone grant, 2024 · $15k
- BDBLUE DRAGON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION USAone grant, 2024 · $14k · revenue 0%
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 create decent, affordable housing for those in need, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience with people everywhere.
The organization advocates for the creation and preservation of affordable housing so all people in maine have a place to call home.
To build lasting prosperity without sacrificing the quality of life that defines maine.
To provide quality affordable housing
Penobscot Community Health Center (PCHC) is a non-profit organization incorporated in 1997 that is governed by a Board of community volunteers and is the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in Maine. PCHC is driven by its mission…
Providing emergency food and shelter to homeless and displaced persons in central Maine.
Harbor Care's mission is to provide vital services, including housing and healthcare to all in our communities needing assistance. Our vision is one where everyone gets to live safe, stable, and healthy lives, filled with purpose, respect…
(msh) saves lives and improves the health of the world's poorest (see schedule o) and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.
The kennebec land trust (klt) works cooperatively with landowners and communities to conserve the forests, lakes, streams, wetlands, fields, and wildlife that help define central maine. klt protects and stewards land permanently, offers…
We strive to help individuals and families in Maine meet their basic, material needs by providing donated clothing, hygiene products, household items, and other necessities. We focus our work on those starting life over from scratch:…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medecins Sans Frontieres Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Yestermorrow Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 37 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 CAPITAL AREA NEW MAINERS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CDA COLLABORATIVE LEARNING PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds CHIP INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HEARTY ROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds Yestermorrow Inc ↗
- Who funds STEPPING STONE HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds PREBLE STREET ↗
- Who funds BLUE DRAGON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds Medical Care Development Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Maine Huts & Trails ↗
- Who funds MIDCOAST HUMANE ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds THE HASSAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INN ALONG THE WAY ↗
- Who funds ROTARY FOUNDATION OF DAMARISCOTTA - NEWCASTLE ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HOPE - THE PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE HEALTH 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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Reny Charitable Foundation · Burns Family Foundation Inc · Leach Elizabeth Ann Pfdn · Bangor Savings Bank Foundation · The Marjorie C Bailey Charitable Foundation · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Esta Kramer Foundation Charitable Trust 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.