· Private foundation
The Robert F Higgins Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $1k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $85k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $125k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MALDEN CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $250,000 |
| AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES | $125,000 |
| MV YOUTH | $25,000 |
| PIONEER INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| DEERFIELD ACADEMY | $25,000 |
| SEARS HOUSE ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| TCC EMPLOYER FUND | $1,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 19% 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- MYMV YOUTH INC5× · 2017–2024 · $125k · revenue +20%
- PIPIONEER INSTITUTE INC2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +61%
- TOTRUSTEES OF DEERFIELD ACADEMY2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +102%
Funded once
- TFTHE FESSENDEN SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +11%
- BCBERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC INCone grant, 2017 · $125k · revenue +18%
- HBHARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $80k
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.
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…
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.
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Education and Research
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and 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…
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.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Amherst college educates students of exceptional potential from all backgrounds so that they may seek value and advance knowledge, engage the world around them, and lead principled lives of consequence. amherst brings together the most…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Trustees of Deerfield Academy and the most unlike its peers is Mv Youth Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 23 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 AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds THE FESSENDEN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds MV YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds PIONEER INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF DEERFIELD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SHERIFF'S MEADOW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds SEARS HOUSE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Council on Foundations Inc ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER SEARCH ↗
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 · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 F Higgins 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.
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- Sheriff's Meadow Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Berklee College of Music Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Fessenden 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 Robert F Higgins Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert F Higgins 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.