· Private foundation
The Ferris 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS UPPER EAST SIDE HISTORIC DISTRICT | $25,000 |
| PRESERVE MONTANA | $15,000 |
| MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK | $15,000 |
| KEY WEST LITERARY SEMINAR | $10,000 |
| PARK COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CENTURY ASSOCIATION ARCHIVES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| KEY WEST FILM SOCIETY INC (DBA TROPIC CINEMA) | $5,000 |
| JAMES MARSTON FITCH CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC | $3,500 |
| PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC | $3,000 |
| WNET | $3,000 |
| PRESERVATION LEAGUE OF NY STATE | $2,500 |
| THE HAITI PROJECT | $2,500 |
| SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY | $1,000 |
| FRIENDS OF KEY WEST LIBRARY | $1,000 |
| FRINGE THEATER OF KEY WEST INC | $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 (FY18–18, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% 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.
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 +29% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 5 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- TSTHE STUDIOS OF KEY WEST6× · 2017–2024 · $96k · revenue +7%
- MPMONTANA PRESERVATION ALLIANCE INC7× · 2018–2025 · $66k · revenue +41%
- KWKEY WEST LITERARY SEMINAR INC9× · 2017–2025 · $66k · revenue +175%
Funded once
- MCMAYO CLINICone grant, 2022 · $20k
- SMSHAKER MUSEUM NEW LEBANONone grant, 2017 · $17k
KEY WEST WILDLIFE CENTER INCone grant, 2023 · $11k · revenue -52%
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 educate the community as to the significance of their architectural and historic heritage through the preservation, protection, improvement, and restoration of sites and buildings in western new york that are of historic or civic…
Description of organization mission: the paley center for media is the premier institution dedicated to advancing the understanding of media-it's artistic value, social impact and historical importance-for the public and media…
The municipal art society of new york (mas) lifts up the voices of the people in the debates that shape new york's built environment and leads the way to a more livable city from sidewalk to skyline. mas envisions a future in which all new…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
A center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists since 1977, which continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
To make the mind more curious, the heart more open, and the spirit more joyful through excellent audio programming that is deeply rooted in new york.
White columns identifies significant emerging and under-represented visual artists and encourages their creative and professional development through the presentation of group and solo exhibitions, an online curated artists registry, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Key West Art and Historical Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is The James Marston Fitch Charitable 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 33 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) — 0% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 75 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 PARK COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE STUDIOS OF KEY WEST ↗
- Who funds MONTANA PRESERVATION ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds KEY WEST LITERARY SEMINAR INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE UPPER EAST SIDE HISTORIC DISTRICTS INC ↗
- Who funds TESLOW PRESERVATION GROUP ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds City Squash Inc ↗
- Who funds TSIC INC DBA/TAKE STOCK IN CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds CENTURY ASSOCIATION ARCHIVES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KEY WEST WILDLIFE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AN CLAIDHEAMH SOLUIS INC ↗
- Who funds The New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S MARTIN HOUSE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC HOUSE TRUST OF NEW YORK CITY INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC DISTRICTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds LIVINGSTON DEPOT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Livingston Healthcare Foundation ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK STEM CELL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PARK COUNTY SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ART DECO SOCIETY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds HAITI PROJECT 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 loosely connected circle, clustered around a few shared anchors.
Open a dossier: Park County Community Foundation · Solid Rock Foundation Co Rosamond Stanton · Community Foundation of the Florida Keys · Freeman Family Foundation · The Jm Kaplan Fund Inc · The Stake Foundation · Harry & Harriet Ruchman Foundation Inc · The Dovana Foundation Inc · The Dogwood Foundation · The Bernhill Fund · The Arthur M Blank Family Foundation · The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta 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 Ferris 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.
- Star of the Sea Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
- Shakespeare & Company Inc — 1% of income from government
- Tsic Inc Dba/Take Stock in Children — 0% of income from government
- South Florida Pbs 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 Ferris Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ferris 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.