· Private foundation
The Rands 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $450k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $720k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| World Central Kitchens | $95,000 |
| Ceres Inc | $75,000 |
| The Nature Conservancy | $75,000 |
| Wildlife Conservation Society | $75,000 |
| Trustees of Reservations | $75,000 |
| Vietnam Health Improvement Project | $75,000 |
| Doctors Without Borders | $75,000 |
| Massachusetts Audubon Society | $75,000 |
| Esperanza Academy | $50,000 |
| Bellesini Academy | $50,000 |
| Oxfam-America | $35,000 |
| Saint Catherine of Siena | $30,000 |
| International Rescue Committee | $25,000 |
| Foundation for MetroWest | $25,000 |
| Catie's Closet | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $383k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 35% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $310k 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
ESPERANZA ACADEMY INC6× · 2020–2025 · $440k · revenue +450%- CICERES INC6× · 2020–2025 · $260k · revenue +66%
- SLSILVER LINING MENTORING INC6× · 2020–2025 · $235k · revenue +106%
Funded once
BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF DORCHESTER INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +127%- BABEACON ACADEMY INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +92%
- HAHIGHER ACHIEVEMENT PROGRAM INCone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue 0%
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 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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
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…
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.…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
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.
Unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives. [text in quotations is taken from the academy's deed of gift, drafted in 1781] knowledge and goodness "above all, it is expected that the attention…
Smith college educates women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. a college of and for the world, smith college links the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, developing leaders for society's…
Located in south hadley, massachusetts, mount holyoke college is a highly selective, nondenominational, residential, research liberal arts college for women that is gender-diverse and welcomes applications from female, transgender, and…
Education and Research
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Thrive Scholars and the most unlike its peers is Sopo Bicycle Cooperative. 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 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 11% 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.
73 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. 73 of the 90 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 ESPERANZA ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF DORCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds SILVER LINING MENTORING INC ↗
- Who funds Community Foundation for MetroWest Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Blessed Stephen Bellesini OSA Academy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CITIZENSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds Catie's Closet Inc ↗
- Who funds BRUNSWICK SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVITY PREPARATORY SCHOOL NEW BEDFORD INC ↗
- Who funds SPARK THE WAVE ↗
- Who funds LOUIS D BROWN PEACE INSTITUTE CORP ↗
- Who funds VIETNAM HEALTH IMPROVEMENT PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BEACON ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds HIGHER ACHIEVEMENT PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Round the Bend Farm Inc ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON DEBATE LEAGUE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds GENERIC MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MARTIN W RICHARD CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVITY SCHOOL OF WORCESTER INC ↗
- Who funds WESTWOOD COMMUNITY CHEST ↗
- Who funds ENVISIONING ACCESS INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL INNOVATION FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds ZACK HEGER FOUNDATION 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: Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Rockland Trust - Blue Hills Charitable Foundation · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Wellington Management Foundation · American Tower Corporation Foundation Inc · Yawkey Foundation II · Eversource Energy Foundation Inc · Highland Street Connection and Subsidiaries
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 Rands 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.
- Cape Abilities Inc — 81% of income from government
- Plummer Youth Promise Inc — 64% of income from government
- Louis D Brown Peace Institute Corp — 32% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Addison County Community Action Gro Inc D/B/a Hope — 18% of income from government
- Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative Inc — 16% of income from government
- Fresh Start Furniture Bank Inc — 12% of income from government
- Round the Bend Farm Inc — 11% of income from government
- Project Citizenship Inc — 10% of income from government
- Silver Lining Mentoring Inc — 10% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program Inc — 8% of income from government
- Boston Debate League Incorporated — 7% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester Inc — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Connecticut Foodshare Inc — 5% of income from government
- Catie's Closet Inc — 4% of income from government
- Community Foundation for MetroWest Inc — 4% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Beacon Academy Inc — 1% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Ceres Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.