· Private foundation
The Robert Cummings 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.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EMORY UNIVERSITY | $1,500 |
| BRATTLEBORO MUSEUM & ART | $1,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $500 |
| THE HISTORIC COLONY HOUSE | $500 |
| PROVIDENCE ATHENAEUM | $500 |
| THE WHEELER SCHOOL | $500 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $500 |
| FOOD BANK OF CONTRA COSTA | $500 |
| BONNYVALE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CENTER | $250 |
| VERMONT LAND TRUST | $250 |
| FOURTH WARD FOUNDATION | $250 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 38% of your 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 100% of The Robert Cummings Family 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, 50% of the giving stays in RI; read by stated purpose it is 0% — 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 +54% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 1 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250 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
- BMBRATTLEBORO MUSEUM & ART CENTERINC9× · 2017–2025 · $7k · revenue +80%
- TWTHE WHEELER SCHOOL6× · 2017–2025 · $4k · revenue +54%
VERMONT LAND TRUST INC9× · 2017–2025 · $4k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBone grant, 2021 · $3k
- TATHE ANDREW LEVITT CENTER FOR SOCIAL EMERGENCY MEDICINEone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue -62%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELESgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $2k · revenue +28%
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
Grist is an independent, non profit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Westerly Hospital Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee 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 39 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 — 3% 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 46 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 THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds BRATTLEBORO MUSEUM & ART CENTERINC ↗
- Who funds THE WHEELER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds VERMONT LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE ATHENAEUM ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE WESTERLY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CONTRA COSTA AND SOLANO ↗
- Who funds Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center ↗
- Who funds THE ANDREW LEVITT CENTER FOR SOCIAL EMERGENCY MEDICINE ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity ↗
- Who funds PRATT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA LYME FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds METAVIVOR RESEARCH AND SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds Sundog Poetry Center Inc ↗
- Who funds THE WESTERLY HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH STONINGTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RYSE INC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN IMMIGRATION & REFUGEE SERVICE INC DBA GLOBAL REFUGE ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds The Spahr Center ↗
- Who funds KIND 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: The Vermont Community Foundation · Amica Companies Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Robert Cummings 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.
- Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service Inc Dba Global Refuge — 100% of income from government
- Root Social Justice Center Inc — 42% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc — 42% of income from government
- Brattleboro Museum & Art Centerinc — 1% 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.
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How do I get to The Robert Cummings Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert Cummings 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.