· Private foundation
The Howard a Van Vleck Foundation
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
96% of The Howard a Van Vleck Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 8 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year The Howard a Van Vleck Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $40k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GARDEN NURSERY SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL VOLUNTEERS | $10,000 |
| WILD CARE | $5,000 |
| THE FOOD PROJECT | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF PLEASANT BAY | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY ART CENTER 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 (FY23–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 79% of The Howard a Van Vleck 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. Read by recipient address, 95% of the giving stays in NH; read by stated purpose it is 92% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
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.
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…
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
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 preserve the unique character and natural resources of harvard.
Sudbury valley trustees, inc. ("the organization") works to protect natural areas and farmland for wildlife and people in the 36 communities that surround the sudbury, assabet, and concord rivers. the organization cares for some of the…
The princeton land trust was formed to preserve the natural beauty and rural character of the town of princeton.
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.
The adirondack council ensures the ecological integrity (clean water and air, wildlife habitat, etc.), wild character (solitude, scenic beauty, etc.), and vibrant communities of new york's six-million-acre adirondack park. the adirondack…
The mission of the massachusetts land trust coalition is to advance land conservation across massachusetts by providing education, tools, networking and advocacy for land trusts and their partners.
The mission of the mount desert land & garden preserve is to conserve and share the beauty of our historic lands and gardens.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Norman Bird Sanctuary Trust and the most unlike its peers is Cool Earth Action Usa 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 40 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 11% 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, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 25 of the 28 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds DARTMOUTH NATURAL RESOURCES TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds TRUDEAU INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL VOLUNTEERS INC ↗
- Who funds GARDEN NURSERY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE POMPERAUG RIVER WATERSHED COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds COOL EARTH ACTION USA INC ↗
- Who funds PARTAKERS INC ↗
- Who funds Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds TIBETAN ASSOCIATION OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds WILD CAREINC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Food Project Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FRIEND OF PLEASANT BAY INC ↗
- Who funds Montclair Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SPEAK FOR THE TREES INC ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AQUIDNECK ISLAND LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE NORMAN BIRD SANCTUARY TRUST ↗
- Who funds MEGUNTICOOK ROWING ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
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 · Eversource Energy Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Howard a Van Vleck 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.
- Partakers Inc — 59% of income from government
- Cambridge School Volunteers Inc — 14% of income from government
- Community Art Center Inc — 14% of income from government
- The Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition Inc — 5% of income from government
- Montclair Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Speak for the Trees Inc — 2% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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 Howard a Van Vleck Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Howard a Van Vleck 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.