· Private foundation
The October Hill 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
52% of The October Hill Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Charities Aid Foundation America, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The October Hill Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 11 organizations, $248k. 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 · FY2022
- Under $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $160k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $68k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA | $67,659 |
| GALAPOGOS CONSERVANCY | $40,000 |
| DAILY BREAD FOOD PANTRY | $25,000 |
| REVIVE THE ROOTS | $25,000 |
| OIKONOS | $20,000 |
| DANBURY ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY INC | $10,000 |
| MONARCH BUTTERFLY FUND | $10,000 |
| WORLD REPAIR PLANTING FOUNDATION INC | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MCGILL UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| YELLOWSTONE TO YUKON CONSERVATION INITIATIVE | $5,000 |
| NEWTOWN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH | $5,000 |
| FERAL CATS OF EAST WINDOSR INC | $5,000 |
| NEWTOWN VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE ASSOC INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $102k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 2% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 34% of The October Hill Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 39% of the giving stays in CT; read by stated purpose it is 37% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +44% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2022, 10 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC4× · 2018–2021 · $116k · revenue +43%- NWNATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION7× · 2017–2024 · $61k · revenue +72%
- MBMONARCH BUTTERFLY FUND6× · 2017–2024 · $48k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- RYREGIONAL YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF WESTERN CONNECTICUT INCone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +5%
- AIAMERICAN IRELAND FUND dba THE IRELAND FUNDS AMERICAone grant, 2020 · $59k
- TSTOWER SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $50k
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…
Our mission is to act to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take into account human needs.
The Natura Bolivia Foundation is dedicated to implementing, and evaluating the impact of conservation and development programs, with a focus on watershed conservation, protected areas, and incentive based conservation in Bolivia. We work…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Iucn-us fund builds bridges between us donors and iucn by catalyzing, accelerating, funding and promoting iucn's work - conserving nature and natural resources in the united states and throughout the world.
RA works at the intersection of business, agriculture & forests to improve lives & protect nature by transforming how land is used, production of goods & consumer choices.
The Land Conservancy of Ridgefield, Inc. ("the Land Conservancy"), founded in 1967, preserves and protects, for the general benefit of the public, Ridgefield, Connecticut's natural resources including land and water resources, the plant…
The program mission of the quebec-labrador foundation u.s. is defined by a regional component (new england and eastern canada), and an international component, which ties our regional model to a global conservation network. qlf's program…
The purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
Natura International conserves rainforests and other key natural ecosystems and the endangered species they contain through creation of protected areas in collaboration with local governments and communities in Latin America. In this way…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Galapagos Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is GreenWood. 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 35 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.
31 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. 31 of the 48 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 THE AMERICAN IRELAND FUND (DBA THE IRELAND FUNDS AMERICA/THE IRELAND FUNDS) ↗
- Who funds GALAPAGOS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds WOONASQUATUCKET VALLEY COMMUNITY BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF WESTERN CONNECTICUT INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds DANBURY ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MONARCH BUTTERFLY FUND ↗
- Who funds THE CHARLTON SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OIKONOS - ECOSYSTEM KNOWLEDGE ↗
- Who funds OLD-GROWTH FOREST NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds NEWTOWN FOREST ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Revive the Roots ↗
- Who funds GreenWood ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR TOMPOTIKA CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds FARM FRESH RHODE ISLAND INC ↗
- Who funds Daily Bread An Ecumenical Food Pantry Inc ↗
- Who funds ECOEDUCATE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MCGILL UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE TO YUKON ↗
- Who funds SWEET BRIAR INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NEWTOWN CHILDRENS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds THE FILM COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds NEWTOWN HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds LOUISVILLE FILM SOCIETY 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: Jeniam Foundation · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 October Hill 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% 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 October Hill Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The October Hill 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.