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The Mustard Seed Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Mustard Seed Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$43k
Granted FY2022
8
Grants FY2022
1
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02Its granteesRead
03Its fieldRead
01What it funds
0184% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2024.

Education$68kRecreation & Sports$17kPhilanthropy$13kCrime & Legal$12kYouth Development$7kArts & Culture$3kHousing & Shelter$2kMembership Benefit$2kOther$0
02FY2022 · 8 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 8 grants below total $29,050, the rows itemized in this filing. The $43,100 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $14,050 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2022

  • Under $10k7 grants · $19k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
$2,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$741k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
First Selectman's Golf Classic$10,000
Notre Dame High School$7,500
Boy Scouts of America Connecticut Yankee Council$5,000
Westport Community Theater$2,000
Center for Family Justice$1,900
Connecticut Fallen Heroes Fund$1,000
Trumbull Youth Association$1,000
Trumbull Little League$650
02Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

74%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$92k · 8 repeat orgs$33k to everyone else

8 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2022, 3 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

8
10

Total granted

$92k
$29k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+24%
+53%

Still filing today

25%
20%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k went to new ones.

50%100%’20’21’22
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’20’21’22
Human ServicesEducationHealthOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • ND
    Notre Dame High School
    3× · 2020–2022 · $20k
  • SJ
    ST JOSEPH HIGH SCHOOL
    2× · 2020–2021 · $16k
  • FS
    First Selectman's Golf Classic
    2× · 2021–2022 · $16k

Funded once

  • IU
    IONA UNIVERSITYgraduated
    one grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +31%
  • KJ
    K. Joseph Sutherland Scholarship
    one grant, 2020 · $5k
  • CH
    CARDINAL HAYES HIGH SCHOOL
    one grant, 2020 · $5k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

03Its field
03the grantee network

4 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 4 of the 21 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
4/4
Grantees still filing
3/4
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Notre Dame High School: $20,400 · OtherNotre Dame High SchoolST JOSEPH HIGH SCHOOL: $16,425 · OtherST JOSEPH HIGH SCHOOLFirst Selectman's Golf Classic: $16,000 · OtherFirst Selectman's Golf ClassicSt. E Fund: $10,000 · OtherSt. E FundSt. Andrew Avellino Alumni Association: $10,000 · OtherSt. Andrew Avellino Alumni AssociationCONNECTICUT YANKEE COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA: $5,500 · OtherCONNECTICUT YANKEE COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICAK. Joseph Sutherland Scholarship: $5,000 · OtherCARDINAL HAYES HIGH SCHOOL: $5,000 · Other+10 more: $13,700 · Other+10 moreTHE CENTER FOR FAMILY JUSTICE INC: $12,400 · Human ServicesTHE CENTER …IONA UNIVERSITY: $10,000 · EducationIONA UNIV…American Heart Association Inc: $500 · Health
Other$102,025Human Services$12,400Education$10,000Health$500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetTHE CENTER FOR FAMILY JUSTICE INC: $12,400 over 3y, 0.2% of budgetIONA UNIVERSITY: $10,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCONNECTICUT YANKEE COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA: $5,500 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetAmerican Heart Association Inc: $500 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds THE CENTER FOR FAMILY JUSTICE INC ↗
  • Who funds IONA UNIVERSITY ↗
  • Who funds CONNECTICUT YANKEE COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
  • Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 21 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $51k of grant expense with no grantee named in the published copy. A private foundation itemizes every grant it makes, so a return carrying none has filed its list as an attachment that the public copy does not include. The figures above are therefore from FY2022, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Mustard Seed’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home