· Private foundation
The Marshall L and Deborah L Berkman Family Charitable Trust
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
69% of The Marshall L and Deborah L Berkman Family Charitable Trust’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year The Marshall L and Deborah L Berkman Family Charitable Trust named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $240k. 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k8 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $154k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| VANGUARD CHARITABLE - STATEMENT | $49,000 |
| VANGUARD CHARITABLE FUND -STATEMENT | $30,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| CAF AMERICA | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF WIGMORE HALL | $10,000 |
| THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| SANTA FE OPERA | $10,000 |
| CAF AMERICA | $10,000 |
| CAF AMERICA | $7,500 |
| CAF AMERICA | $7,500 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE A | $7,500 |
| SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL | $5,000 |
| CAF AMERICA | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
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 (FY19–25, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 36% of The Marshall L and Deborah L Berkman Family Charitable Trust’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.
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.
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.
21 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2020, 12 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $750 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
NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL4× · 2019–2025 · $151k · revenue +24%
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc3× · 2023–2025 · $80k · revenue +3%
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY5× · 2019–2025 · $65k · revenue +35%
Funded once
CHARLES RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $6k · revenue +210%- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF WIGMOone grant, 2019 · $5k
- SUSHELTERBOX USA INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +58%
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.
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.
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
Organization's mission bentley university believes good business can impact more than the bottom line - it can change the world. bentley is a community of future business leaders who will deliver value in the marketplace and lasting…
Bb&n, an all gender day school in cambridge, massachusetts, was established in 1974 by the merger of two independent schools, the buckingham school and the browne & nichols school, founded respectively in 1889 and 1883. located on multiple…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Education and Research
The cambridge school of weston's mission is to provide a progressive education that emphasizes deep learning and meaningful relationships. our dynamic program inspires students to discover who they are and what their contribution is to…
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
To provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is West End House Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 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 38 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.
26 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. 26 of the 37 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 CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CHAPEL & YORK US FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF WIGMORE HALL INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL LTD ↗
- Who funds MIDDLESEX SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH ALLIANCE FOR LAW AND SOCIAL ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLES RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHELTERBOX USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE WINSOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOSTON AREA RAPE CRISIS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds WORLD BICYCLE RELIEF NFP ↗
- Who funds BOSTON CARES INC ↗
- Who funds WEST END HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds PINE STREET INN INC ↗
- Who funds BRONX LETTERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRLS ON THE RUN GREATER BOSTON ↗
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 · Boston Foundation Inc · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Analog Devices Foundation · Fidelity Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Marshall L and Deborah L Berkman Family Charitable Trust 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.
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Inc — 82% of income from government
- Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action Inc — 13% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Charles River Watershed Association Inc — 8% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Girls On the Run Greater Boston — 4% of income from government
- West End House Inc — 2% 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.