· Private foundation
The John J McDonnell Margaret T O'Brien 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 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 $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $231k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $515k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MEDICINES FOR HUMANITY | $145,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $120,000 |
| NOTRE DAME CRISTO REY HIGH SCHOOL | $85,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI | $65,000 |
| CHRISTIAN APPALACHIAN PROJECT | $50,000 |
| MADISON SQUARE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB | $50,000 |
| AMERICANS INDIAN COLLEGE | $26,250 |
| GRACE INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| RICARDO O' GORMAN GARDEN | $25,000 |
| PIEGAN INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| COVENANT HOUSE | $20,000 |
| ROSIE'S PLACE | $20,000 |
| PLEBEIAN HELPERS INC | $20,000 |
| SISTER CELESTE CHILD DEVELOPMENT | $15,000 |
| ST JOSEPHS INDIAN SCHOOL | $15,000 |
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, $190k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 76% 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 +26% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 7 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $106k 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
- MFMEDICINES FOR HUMANITY INC9× · 2017–2025 · $890k · revenue +15%
- MSMadison Square Boys & Girls Club9× · 2017–2025 · $750k · revenue +45%
NOTRE DAME CRISTO REY HIGH SCHOOL INC9× · 2017–2025 · $743k · revenue +22%
Funded once
BUTLER HOSPITALgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +61%- CMCHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF THE EAST END Igraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +51%
- AIAMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH RUNNING STRONG INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +43%
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To empower individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, while partnering with employers to hire, develop, and retain productive workforces.
Maha breaks down barriers facing first-time and first-generation home buyers and owners through education, counseling, advocacy, and grassroots organizing.
Neighborhealth's mission is to promote and sustain healthy communities, families, and individuals by providing accessible, person-centered, and compassionate, high-quality health care services to all who live and work in our service area,…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Laboure college provides high-quality education and prepares women and men for careers in nursing and allied health fields.
To advance the interests of the human services sector and providers through advocacy, education, and engagement of diverse stakeholders for collective impact.
For more than a century, the international institute of new england (iine) has been creating opportunities for refugees and immigrants to succeed through resettlement, education, career advancement, and pathways to citizenship. founded in…
Mhic's mission is to be an innovative private financier of afforable housing and community development throughout new england, providing financing that would not otherwise be available, and extending the impact of that financing to ensure…
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
Mfhc is committed to ending systemic housing discrimination and creating inclusive communities through education, outreach, advocacy, housing counseling and enforcement.
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 Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc and the most unlike its peers is University of Miami. 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 36 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 55 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 MEDICINES FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds Madison Square Boys & Girls Club ↗
- Who funds NOTRE DAME CRISTO REY HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN APPALACHIAN PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds GRACE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MELROSE ALLIANCE AGAINST VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds DREAMS OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds THE PARRISH ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds American Liver Foundation ↗
- Who funds BUTLER HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL MYELOMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BLOOD CLOT ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds PIEGAN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF THE EAST END I ↗
- Who funds PLEBEIANHELPERS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH RUNNING STRONG INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON HEALTH CARE FOR THE HOMELESS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVE AMERICAN JUMP START ↗
- Who funds PINE STREET INN INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON AREA RAPE CRISIS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Eastern Bank Foundation · Cambridge Savings Charitable Foundation Inc · Melrose Cooperative Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · First Nations Development Institute · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · 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 John J McDonnell Margaret T O'Brien 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.
- Victim Rights Law Center Inc — 89% of income from government
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Inc — 82% of income from government
- La Colaborativa Inc — 34% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Melrose Alliance Against Violence Inc — 19% of income from government
- Housing Families Inc — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program Inc — 8% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Follow Your Art Community Studios Inc — 3% of income from government
- Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Food Drive Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- National Indian Child Welfare Association — 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 John J McDonnell Margaret T O'Brien Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The John J McDonnell Margaret T O'Brien 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.