· Private foundation
The Fish Family 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
99% of The Fish Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Boston Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The Fish Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 90 organizations, $3M. 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 · FY2022
- Under $10k55 grants · $128k
- $10k–50k39 grants · $602k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.6M
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE BOSTON FOUNDATION INC | $250,000 |
| RIAN IMMIGRANT CENTER | $245,032 |
| WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE | $223,000 |
| BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER | $200,000 |
| PROJECT CITIZENSHIP | $164,177 |
| AGENCIA ALPHA | $160,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT PRACTICE | $110,000 |
| DE NOVO CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HEALING INC | $84,800 |
| CARIBBEAN YOUTH CLUB INC | $75,000 |
| PHOENIX CHARTER ACADEMY NETWORK | $65,000 |
| IMMIGRANT FAMILY SERVICES INSTITUTE INC | $60,000 |
| BRAZILIAN WORKER CENTER | $51,000 |
| MOTHERS FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY | $50,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS | $50,000 |
| ROCA INC | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% 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.
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 Fish Family Foundation’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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +83% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
108 repeat relationships — 65 still active in FY2022, 43 since wound down; 54 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- PCPROJECT CITIZENSHIP INC5× · 2017–2022 · $989k · revenue +101% · 39% of their budget
RIAN IMMIGRANT CENTER INC5× · 2017–2022 · $623k · revenue +105%- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF BOSTON INC4× · 2017–2021 · $596k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- NCNEXT CHAPTER BOOK CLUBone grant, 2017 · $116k
- UJUS- JAPAN COUNCILgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $107k · revenue +236%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $100k
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
To advance the interests of the human services sector and providers through advocacy, education, and engagement of diverse stakeholders for collective impact.
The mission of the cambridge chamber of commerce is to make cambridge a better place in which to live, to work, to do business, to visit and to study.
The massachusetts alliance for early college (ma4ec) is a cross-sector coalition focused on significantly increasing the number of students with access to high-quality early college in massachusetts to promote college and career success…
New england law/boston dedicates itself to preparing students to be successful lawyers and leaders in the public and private sectors through integrated practical, theoretical and ethical education of the highest caliber and to contributing…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Massachusetts education and career opportunities, inc. (massedco, inc.) is a statewide network of service sites that provides education and career advising to over 12,000 low-income, first generation individuals each year. massedco…
Mhic's mission is to be an innovative private financier of afforable housing and community development throughout new england, providing financing that would not otherwise be available, and extending the impact of that financing to ensure…
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Neighborhealth's mission is to promote and sustain healthy communities, families, and individuals by providing accessible, person-centered, and compassionate, high-quality health care services to all who live and work in our service area,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Philanthropy Massachusetts Inc and the most unlike its peers is Boston Bullpen Project 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 35 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
174 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. 174 of the 239 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CITIZENSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds RIAN IMMIGRANT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS INC ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds Resilient Coders Inc ↗
- Who funds ACLU FOUNDATION OF MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT PRACTICE INC ↗
- Who funds ABOUT FRESH INC ↗
- Who funds MORE THAN WORDS INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS LEGAL ASSISTANCE CORP ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS ALLIANCE OF PORTUGUESE SPEAKERS INC ↗
- Who funds UTEC Inc ↗
- Who funds SILVER LINING MENTORING INC ↗
- Who funds DE NOVO CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HEALING ↗
- Who funds HEALTH LAW ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds ACTION FOR BOSTON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds RAW ART WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds ROCA INC ↗
- Who funds US- JAPAN COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds DUET INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE ADVOCACY COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds Brazilian Worker Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CHINATOWN NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ELLIS EARLY LEARNING INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds SIMMONS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ASCENTRIA CARE ALLIANCE 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: Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Barr Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · The Klarman Family Foundation · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Riley Mabel Louise Tr Uwill · The Cabot Family Charitable Trust · Bushrod H Campbell & Adah F Hall Charity Fund · Health Resources in Action 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 Fish Family 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.
- Hopewell Inc — 83% of income from government
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Inc — 82% of income from government
- Roca Inc — 78% of income from government
- Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp — 68% of income from government
- Management Sciences for Health Inc — 67% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Health Law Advocates Inc — 52% of income from government
- Justice Resource Institute Inc — 48% of income from government
- Utec Inc — 46% of income from government
- Center for New Americans Inc — 45% of income from government
- Boston Harbor Now Inc — 45% of income from government
- Mothers for Justice and Equality Inc — 43% of income from government
- Health Resources in Action Inc — 39% of income from government
- Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center Inc — 38% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds Inc — 32% of income from government
- Bridge Over Troubled Waters Inc — 32% of income from government
- Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence Inc — 32% of income from government
- Health Care for All Inc — 29% of income from government
- More Than Words Inc — 24% of income from government
- Uncornered Inc — 24% of income from government
- International Institute of New England Inc — 24% of income from government
- Child and Family Services Inc — 24% of income from government
- Fathers Uplift Incorporated — 22% of income from government
- Ellis Early Learning Inc — 20% of income from government
- Asian American Civic Association Inc — 19% of income from government
- Greater Lowell Community Foundation Inc — 18% of income from government
- Balletrox Inc — 15% of income from government
- Doc Wayne Inc — 15% of income from government
- Community Health Programs Incorporated — 13% of income from government
- Salem Pantry Inc — 12% of income from government
- English for New Bostonians Inc — 11% of income from government
- La Vida Inc — 11% of income from government
- Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health Inc — 11% of income from government
- Action for Boston Community Development Inc — 11% of income from government
- Project Citizenship Inc — 10% of income from government
- Tech Goes Home Incorporated — 10% of income from government
- Silver Lining Mentoring Inc — 10% of income from government
- De Novo Center for Justice and Healing — 9% of income from government
- Lawrence Communityworks Inc — 9% of income from government
- Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition Inc — 8% of income from government
- Women's Lunch Place Inc — 8% of income from government
- Refugee & Immigrant Assistance Center — 8% of income from government
- Parent Professional Advocacy League Inc — 8% of income from government
- Granada House Inc — 7% of income from government
- Raw Art Works Inc — 7% of income from government
- Rogerson Communities Inc — 6% of income from government
- Brazilian Worker Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Coaching for Change Inc — 5% of income from government
- Zumix Inc — 5% of income from government
- Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers Inc — 4% of income from government
- Centro De Los Derechos Del Migrante Inc — 4% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Inc — 3% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- Peabody Essex Museum Inc — 3% of income from government
- Babson College — 3% of income from government
- Company One Inc — 2% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Inc — 2% of income from government
- Commonwealth Zoological Corporation D/B/a Zoo New England — 2% of income from government
- Cape Cod Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Childrens Museum — 1% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% of income from government
- Boston Center for the Arts Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Simmons University — 1% of income from government
- Lawyers for Civil Rights Inc — 1% of income from government
- Lesley University — 1% of income from government
- Emerald Necklace Conservancy Inc — 0% of income from government
- Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Epiphany School Inc — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Fine Arts — 0% of income from government
- Ceres Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Cushman School Inc — 0% of income from government
- Philanthropy Massachusetts Inc — 0% of income from government
- Steppingstone Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation 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
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