· Private foundation
The Help for People 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 $10k9 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $230k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UPPER VALLEY HAVEN | $40,000 |
| LIGHTHOUSE HOLYOKE | $40,000 |
| ST JUDES RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $40,000 |
| VERMONT PUBLIC | $20,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE NORRIS COTTON CANCER | $20,000 |
| WILLING HANDS | $20,000 |
| SPECIAL NEEDS SUPPORT CENTER | $10,000 |
| THE FAMILY PLACE | $10,000 |
| PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE | $10,000 |
| NEW HAMPSHIRE PUBLIC RADIO | $10,000 |
| HARTFORD DISMAS HOUSE | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | $5,000 |
| NORWICH COMMUNITY COLLABORATIVE | $5,000 |
| SPARK COMMUNITY CENTER | $5,000 |
| HOLYOKE ART INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $406k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 10% 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.
49 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 5 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- WHWILLING HANDS ENTERPRISES INC7× · 2017–2025 · $246k · revenue +48%
- UVUPPER VALLEY HAVEN6× · 2017–2025 · $181k · revenue +107%
- LCLIGHTWORKS COLLECTIVE INC5× · 2020–2025 · $97k · revenue +232%
Funded once
- TFTHE FOCUS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2024 · $30k · revenue 0%
- THTHE HAVEN UPPER VALLEY HAVENone grant, 2021 · $25k
- THTHE HAVENone grant, 2021 · $20k
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.
Listener-supported Vermont Public Radio has been serving the people of Vermont and the surrounding region since 1977. As Vermonts only statewide public radio network, VPR provides an essential and trusted independent voice for news,…
Protect land along rivers, lakes and wetlands of vt; protect public access, wildlife habitat, scenic natural beauty, and ecological integrity.
Serve as the governing organization for physicians who are employed to provide clinical services to affiliated member hospitals (the "affiliated hospitals") of the university of vermont health network ("uvm health network").
See schedule othe mission of the vermont council on world affairs is to promote awareness and understanding of the world and its people, places and cultures through education and engagement. the future of vermont depends upon the world…
Veic is a sustainable energy company on a mission to generate the energy solutions the world needs (continues in schedule o). (continued), working to combat the climate crisis, boost community resilience, and lower energy costs. for nearly…
Vermont interfaith power and light (vtipl) works to help members of vermont's faith and spiritual communities understand that the climate crisis which is threatening the viability of life on earth is a spiritual crisis. vtipl conducts…
Rooted in vermont since 1977, the vermont land trust unites land and lives for the enduring benefit of people and the place we share. we help people protect, care for, and connect to land. this includes the farms, forests, natural areas,…
The mission of cooperation vermont is to build thriving community economic and enviromental democracy.
Vermont electric cooperative is a member owned not-for-profit whose mission is to provide safe, affordable, and reliable energy services to its members.
The vermont center for ecostudies advances the conservation of wildlife across the americas through research, monitoring, and citizen engagement.
To promote trails and greenways and to ensure that people will always have access to the landscape of vermont.
The vermont community foundation helps to build philanthropic resources to sustain healthy and vital vermont communities. the foundation connects and mobilizes people through giving to multiply the impact of philanthropy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Vital Communities Inc and the most unlike its peers is National Wildlife Federation. 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 32 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
48 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. 48 of the 92 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 WILLING HANDS ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY HAVEN ↗
- Who funds LIGHTWORKS COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN STAGE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE FAMILY PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Norwich Community Collaborative Inc ↗
- Who funds Good Neighbor Health Clinic Inc ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL NEEDS SUPPORT CENTER OF THE UPPER VALLEY ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds VALLEY INSIGHT MEDITATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds Community Gallery Inc ↗
- Who funds UPPER VALLEY TRAILS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S INFORMATION SERVICE (WISE) OF THE UPPER VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds SPARK COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOCUS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds VERMONT PUBLIC CO ↗
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: The Couch Family Foundation · New Hampshire Charitable Foundation · The Vermont Community Foundation · Emily Landecker Foundation Inc · Mascoma Bank Foundation · Flora R and Isidor M Stettenheim Foundation Inc · Frank and Brinna Sands Foundation · Hypertherm Hope Foundation Inc · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · Barrette Family Fund · The Greenspan Foundation 5223318 · The Stannard & Dorothy Dunn Charitable Trust
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 Help for People 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.
- Institute for Sustainable Communities — 100% of income from government
- The Family Place Inc — 38% of income from government
- Upper Valley Haven — 38% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Salvation Farms Inc — 26% of income from government
- Willing Hands Enterprises Inc — 17% of income from government
- Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports — 11% of income from government
- Vital Communities Inc — 5% of income from government
- Northern Stage Company — 5% of income from government
- Montshire Museum of Science Inc — 4% of income from government
- Upper Valley Trails Alliance — 3% of income from government
- Norwich Community Collaborative Inc — 1% of income from government
- Vermont Public Co — 0% of income from government
- Vermont Institute of Natural Science 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 Help for People Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Help for People 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.