· Private foundation
The Hearthstone 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 $10k17 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $72k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTPORT LAND TRUST | $27,000 |
| ELIZABETHTOWN COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| DUKE UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH | $8,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $8,000 |
| MEDFORD LEAS FUND | $5,500 |
| NEEDHAM COMMUNITY COUNCIL | $5,000 |
| LUMBERTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| BOSTON BULL PEN PROJECT | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| THE CHILDREN'S SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| WESTPORT RIVER ALLIANCE | $1,000 |
| NEEDHAM HISTORY CENTER | $1,000 |
| ROSIE S PLACE | $500 |
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 (FY17–25, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 38% 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 15% of The Hearthstone 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 +55% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
42 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down; 6 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; $9k 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
DUKE UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $140k · revenue +51%- BBBoston Bullpen Project Inc4× · 2021–2025 · $27k · revenue +60%
- WLWESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC3× · 2018–2020 · $26k · revenue +181%
Funded once
- TETHE ESTAUGH TA MEDFORD LEASone grant, 2018 · $21k · revenue +4%
- WFWATERTOWN FIREFIGHTERS RELIEF ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2017 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $8k
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.
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…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
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.
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…
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Our costs consist of acquiring, sorting and distributing food to 617 member agencies, transportation and logistics, and community outreach to 69 direct distribution sites such as gbfb mobile markets, and federal distributions for low…
Mcphs university prepares students for careers in health care through teaching, scholarship, research, professional service and community engagement.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
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…
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…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Saint Francis House 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 47 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) — 2% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 90 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 ELIZABETHTOWN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Boston Bullpen Project Inc ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds NEEDHAM COMMUNITY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE ESTAUGH TA MEDFORD LEAS ↗
- Who funds KIMBALL UNION ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Medford Leas Residents Association ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds CRADLES TO CRAYONS INC ↗
- Who funds PINE STREET INN INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds WASHTENAW COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CIRCLE OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds FOREST HISTORY SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds BABY BASICS INC ↗
- Who funds WESTPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds OLD NEWSBOYS GOODFELLOW FUND OF DETROIT MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds THE WILY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds THE HOME FOR LITTLE WANDERERS 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 · Rockland Trust - Blue Hills Charitable Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Aetna Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Lissy Family Foundation · Needham Bank Charitable Foundation Inc · Philanthropy Massachusetts Inc · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · The Rhode Island Community 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 Hearthstone 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.
- The Home for Little Wanderers Inc — 38% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- America Scores New England Dba Boston Scores — 30% of income from government
- Italian Home for Children Inc — 29% of income from government
- Saint Francis House Inc — 18% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Needham Community Council Inc — 2% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Westport Historical Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- World Forestry Center — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place 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 Hearthstone Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Hearthstone 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.