· Private foundation
The Morningstar Family 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
91% of The Morningstar Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Combined Jewish Philanthropies Of Greater Boston Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Morningstar Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $303k. 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k3 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $190k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ATLANTIC COUNCIL | $100,000 |
| STANFORD LAW SCHOOL | $90,000 |
| WELLESLEY CENTERS FOR WOMEN | $30,000 |
| LUNGEVITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL | $15,000 |
| OUR SISTERS SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| ANTI DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $10,000 |
| FREEDOM HOUSE | $10,000 |
| NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $3,000 |
| WELLESLEY COLLEGE | $2,500 |
| MGH DIABETES RESEARCH FUND | $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 (FY17–18, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 +63% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2021, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- ACATLANTIC COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES INC6× · 2019–2024 · $600k · revenue +3%
- WCWellesley College6× · 2017–2022 · $163k · revenue +63%
Old Dartmouth Historical Society5× · 2017–2021 · $50k · revenue +283%
Funded once
- HFHARVARD FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCESone grant, 2018 · $63k
SUFFOLK UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +9%- ACAMERICAN COUNCILSone grant, 2017 · $25k
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 university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
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.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Education and Research
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
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.…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Wpi transforms lives, turns knowledge into action to confront global challenges, and revolutionizes stem through distinctive and inclusive education, projects and research. (http://www.wpi.edu/about/mission.html)
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wellesley College and the most unlike its peers is Lung Cancer Research Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 20 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 Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds OUR SISTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds Old Dartmouth Historical Society ↗
- Who funds SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LUNGEVITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM HOUSE ↗
- Who funds LUNG CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOWELL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds STORE TO DOOR ↗
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Morningstar 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Old Dartmouth Historical Society — 2% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- Suffolk University — 1% of income from government
- Our Sisters School — 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 Morningstar Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Morningstar Family 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.