· Private foundation
The Ferrara Foundation Inc
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 FY2023–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| STERLING PROMISE FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 33% 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 11% of The Ferrara Foundation Inc’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, 76% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 57% — 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.
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.
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
Our mission is to always welcome and connect young people and families to opportunities that embrace diversity, nurture growth, and inspire success.
The base ball, inc. d/b/a the base is a not-for-profit organization working to shift the national mindset and re-imagine pathways to success for urban youth. founded in roxbury, ma, the base operates in boston and on the westside of…
Btc's vision is for all brookline students to engage in their community and emerge ready for college, career, and beyond. our mission is to provide a platform where all teens can explore, create, and discover who they are. through…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Patient care, teaching, research and serving the community.
The ymca of greater boston is dedicated to improving the health of mind, body, and spirit of individuals and families in our communities. we promote welcoming, belonging, and opportunity for all.
Organization's mission bentley university believes good business can impact more than the bottom line - it can change the world. bentley is a community of future business leaders who will deliver value in the marketplace and lasting…
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 an economically just region where prosperity is shared across race and ethnicity.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Vietnam Veterans Workshop Inc Dba New England Center and Home for Veterans and the most unlike its peers is Sterling Promise 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.
Your grantees are a median of 33 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 21 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 FRIENDSHIPWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CITIZENSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITABLE BUREAU OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLAY BALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Sterling Promise Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds PELOTONIA ↗
- Who funds VIETNAM VETERANS WORKSHOP INC DBA NEW ENGLAND CENTER AND HOME FOR VETERANS ↗
- Who funds DJ HENRY DREAM FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds SHOES THAT FIT ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds HEART AND HAND CENTER ↗
- Who funds C5 Youth Foundation of Texas Inc ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINE FOOD PANTRY 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: Boston Foundation Inc · Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Eastern Bank Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Ferrara Foundation Inc 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.
- Vietnam Veterans Workshop Inc Dba New England Center and Home for Veterans — 66% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Project Citizenship Inc — 10% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Vermont Community Foundation — 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 Ferrara Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Ferrara Foundation Inc 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.