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The Harkness Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

The Harkness Trust

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.

$600k
Granted FY2024still arriving
1
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$600k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
04Through PlinthRead

Read this first · the figures below need context

100% of The Harkness Trust’s FY2024 grant dollars went to President And Fellows Of Harvard College, not to grantees.

Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.

Organizations named directly on the return

1
’20
3
’21
3
’22
1
’23
0
’24

Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.

01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2024.

Education$2.4MScience & Tech$600kArts & Culture$110kEnvironment$40k
02FY2024 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$600,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$12M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
HARVARD UNIVERSITY$600,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 95% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 7%HARVARD UNIVERSITY: $600k → 8%BROOKS SCHOOL: $650k → 10%ELKHORN MARINE CONSERVANCY: $40k → 14%URI FOUNDATION: $100k → 7%SRBA HISTORIC BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION FOUNDATION: $10k → 7%HARVARD UNIVERSITY WADSWORTH HOUSE: $500k → 8%BROOKS SCHOOL: $500k → 10%THE PROUT SCHOOL: $50k → 7%HARVARD UNIVERSITY WADSWORTH HOUSE: $350k → 8%BROOKS SCHOOL: $100k → 10%HARVARD UNIVERSITY WADSWORTH HOUSE: $120k → 8%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 8 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
6/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

BROOKS SCHOOL: $1,250,000 · EducationBROOKS SCHOOLPresident and Fellows of Harvard College: $600,000 · EducationPresident and Fellows of Harvard CollegeUNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION & ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT: $100,000 · EducationHARVARD UNIVERSITY WADSWORTH HOUSE: $970,000 · OtherHARVARD UNIVERSITY WADSWORTH HOUSEPROUT SCHOOL: $50,000 · OtherElkhorn Marine Conservancy Inc: $40,000 · OtherTHE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION: $100,000 · Arts & CultureSRBA HISTORIC BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION FOUNDATION: $10,000 · Arts & Culture
Education$1,950,000Other$1,060,000Arts & Culture$110,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetBROOKS SCHOOL: $1,250,000 over 3y, 1.5% of budgetPresident and Fellows of Harvard College: $600,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION: $100,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION & ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT: $100,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetElkhorn Marine Conservancy Inc: $40,000 over 1y, 9.1% of budgetSRBA HISTORIC BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION FOUNDATION: $10,000 over 1y, 2.7% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Harkness Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Harkness Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%1%3%6%10%funder's share of their income ↑0%4%8%11%15%share of the org’s income from government →median 7%
  • President and Fellows of Harvard College: 7% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%
typical government reliance, FY20–25
How this is measured
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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
04Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Harkness Trust?

Find your warmest path to The Harkness Trust 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 8 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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