· Private foundation
The Helen R Buck Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 64% of THE HELEN R BUCK FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $108k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $88k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Somerset County Park Foundation | $87,544 |
| Triangle Land Conservancy Inc | $20,000 |
| Johns Hopkins University | $18,000 |
| Blithewold | $15,000 |
| District Of Columbia Green Spaces Allian | $15,000 |
| Sibley Memorial Hospital Foundation | $10,000 |
| Botanical Garden of the Piedmont | $10,000 |
| Dutchess Land Conservancy Inc | $10,000 |
| Cultivate Charlottesville | $10,000 |
| Our Lady of Victory Church | $6,000 |
| NPR Foundation | $6,000 |
| Historic Morven | $6,000 |
| Community Food Bank of New Jersey | $6,000 |
| Newport Tree Conservancy | $5,000 |
| Hudson Valley Clubhouse Inc | $4,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +33% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 4 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $49k 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
- SCSomerset County Park Foundation5× · 2021–2025 · $386k · revenue +34% · 38% of their budget
- BIBLITHEWOLD INC4× · 2022–2025 · $57k · revenue +31%
- BGBOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE PIEDMONT5× · 2021–2025 · $57k · revenue +822%
Funded once
- SCSomerset County Park Foundationone grant, 2020 · $61k
- NHNATIONAL HEADACHE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue -40%
- DODistrict of Columbia Green Spaces Allianceone grant, 2020 · $12k
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 new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
To enrich life by perpetuating tropical plants, ecosystems and cultural heritage through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education.
New england botanic garden at tower hill creates experiences with plants that inspire people and improve the world.
The mission of the jenkins arboretum & gardens is to preserve natural, tranquil woodlands for community enjoyment, to showcase native plants and a world class collection of rhododendrons and azaleas, and to promote environmental…
To preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.
To protect and restore the ecological health of forest park and marquam nature park, maintain and enhance their extensive trails networks, promote equitable access, and inspire diverse community appreciation and stewardship of these iconic…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
The mission of denver botanic gardens is to connect people with plants, especially plants from the rocky mountain region and similar regions around the world, providing delight and enlightenment to everyone.
Overview - founded in boston by pioneering landscape architect and open space visionary charles eliot in 1891, the trustees is the nation's first and the commonwealth's largest conservation and preservation nonprofit.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Preservation Society of Newport County and the most unlike its peers is Peapack Gladstone Fire Co 1 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 41 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.
25 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. 25 of the 57 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 Somerset County Park Foundation ↗
- Who funds BLITHEWOLD INC ↗
- Who funds BOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE PIEDMONT ↗
- Who funds DUTCHESS LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Community Food Bank Of New Jersey Inc ↗
- Who funds SIBLEY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC MORVEN INC ↗
- Who funds NPR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST GEORGE'S SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRIANGLE LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PRESERVATION SOCIETY OF NEWPORT COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BLUE HILL HERITAGE TRUST ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL HEADACHE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEAPACK GLADSTONE FIRE CO 1 INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAFE CHILDREN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Inc ↗
- Who funds The Newport Tree Conservancy ↗
- Who funds Cultivate Charlottesville ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds CARY INSTITUTE OF ECOSYSTEM STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds SHELBURNE MUSEUM 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: Ibm International Foundation · The Hartfield Fdn Inc 0739-80-42 · Van Beuren Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 R Buck 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Shelburne Museum Inc — 9% 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 Helen R Buck Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Helen R Buck 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.