· Private foundation
The Karas Family 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $3,500 |
| WELD SEATTLE | $2,052 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,035 |
| FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN BOSTON | $2,000 |
| NORTHWEST FILM FORUM | $1,050 |
| UNICEF | $1,046 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,021 |
| NATIONAL MARINE LIFE CENTER | $1,000 |
| ASPCA | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| RAVE FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| KARAS FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP FUND (RECPIENT KENNEDY DYLEWICZ) | $1,000 |
| SURFRIDER FOUNDATION | $829 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
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 (FY17–24, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 8% 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.
31 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 30 since wound down; 15 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 4% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
DUKE UNIVERSITY7× · 2017–2023 · $26k · revenue +51%- FHFRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER7× · 2017–2023 · $10k · revenue +27%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2022 · $9k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- JHJOHN HAY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $6k
ESSEX COUNTY GREENBELT ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +61%- OOUIMETORGone grant, 2021 · $3k
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 purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
Ceres is a nonprofit advocacy organization working to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more just, and resilient world. through education and research, we make the business case for action on the most pressing sustainability…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
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,…
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 Seattle Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Rockhouse Foundation. 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
58 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. 58 of the 138 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 DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds Sound Experience ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER COUNTY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds ESSEX COUNTY GREENBELT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds WELD SEATTLE ↗
- Who funds CAMP SUNSHINE AT SEBAGO LAKE INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHILLIPS BROOKS HOUSE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WATER FIRST INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds PAN-MASSACHUSETTS CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER SEARCH ↗
- Who funds THE IF PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN - BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE DREAMYARD PROJECT 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: Seattle Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Barton Family Foundation · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Karas Family 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.
- End Mass Overdose Inc — 99% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- National Marine Life Center Inc — 16% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Essex County Greenbelt Association — 8% of income from government
- Friends of the Children - Boston Inc — 4% of income from government
- Emerson Hospital — 3% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Special Olympics Massachusetts Inc — 1% of income from government
- Neads Inc — 1% of income from government
- Worcester County Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Harvard Conservation Trust — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge 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.