· Private foundation
The Helen Benham Foundation Helen Benham Trustee
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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $10,000 |
| ISLAND GROWN INITIATIVE | $5,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $5,000 |
| VINEYARD CONSERVATION SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| SAVE THE CHILDREN | $5,000 |
| SOHO ALLIANCE | $5,000 |
| CIRCUIT ARTS | $3,000 |
| THE WAKEMAN CENTER | $2,500 |
| MARTHA'S VINEYARD ISLAND HOUSING TRUST | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–20, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
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 +98% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 3 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
Save The Children Federation Inc7× · 2017–2025 · $38k · revenue +21%
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC7× · 2017–2025 · $36k · revenue +98%- IHISLAND HOUSING TRUST CORPORATION5× · 2018–2024 · $20k · revenue +283%
Funded once
- CLCAFFE LENA INCone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +13%
CREATIVE VISIONS FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +908%- WCWORLD CENTERAL KITCHENone grant, 2024 · $10k
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.
Gardens for Health International works to provide lasting agricultural solutions to chronic childhood malnutrition
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
The mission of health care without harm (hcwh) is to transform health care worldwide so that it reduces its environmental footprint, becomes a community anchor for sustainability and a leader in the global movement for environmental health…
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
We Dont Waste increases food access and protects the planet by rescuing and repurposing food, while educating and advocating to increase food security and decrease food waste.
The nantucket conservation foundation owns, protects, and stewards over 9,000 acres of land and coastal shoreline, conserves nantucket's rare and significant natural resources, and engages in impactful ecological research to inform…
Earthenable works to solve the housing crisis in africa by revolutionizing the rural housing industry through innovative, affordable, and sustainable home-building solutions. its mission is to create healthier, safer, and climate-resilient…
Expand philanthropy on Marthas Vineyard and support its nonprofit organizations through capacity building and advocacy.
Accelerate the transformation to a healthy, sustainable and equitable food system.
Dedicated to the early detection and prevention of cervical cancer around the globe for the women who need it most.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Field & fork network connects communities to innovative solutions that foster a sustainable food system. the 4 areas of focus include: food access, agriculture economic development, youth development and healthy neighborhoods.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is World Central Kitchen Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sense of Wonder Creations 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 37 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.
26 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. 26 of the 43 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 Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds VINEYARD CONSERVATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CAFFE LENA INC ↗
- Who funds ISLAND HOUSING TRUST CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ISLAND GROWN INITIATIVE LTD ↗
- Who funds CIRCUIT ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE VISIONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD CEREBRAL PALSY CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK WOMEN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD INC ↗
- Who funds TOGETHER HELPING OTHERS INC ↗
- Who funds Vineyard House Inc ↗
- Who funds THE GLOBAL HUNGER PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds VINEYARD OPEN LAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FEATHERSTONE CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Sense of Wonder Creations Inc ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds ZERO TO THREE NATIONAL CENTER FOR INFANTS TODDLERS AND FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds Christian Herald Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Chilmark Volunteer Firemans Assn Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY 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: Stonehouse Inc · Martha's Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation Inc · Paul W Dimaura Charitable Trust Attn Edward F Fay Esq · South Mountain Company Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Helen Benham Foundation Helen Benham Trustee 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% of income from government
- Island Housing Trust Corporation — 1% of income from government
- Circuit Arts Inc — 1% of income from government
- Island Grown Initiative Ltd — 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.