· Private foundation
The Ruth L Lee Fund
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $95k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS | $40,000 |
| SMITH CAMPUS SCHOOL | $39,825 |
| UNCOMMON LAW | $15,000 |
| EMBODIMENT INSTITUTE | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| BECAUSE BLACK IS STILL BEAUTIFUL | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| BEAM | $2,500 |
| CHILDREN INC | $1,140 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW | $1,000 |
| WGBH | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| ZERO TO THREE | $250 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $200 |
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 (FY21–25, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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 +52% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 7 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- ULUNCOMMON LAW9× · 2017–2025 · $280k · revenue ×24
ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $280k · revenue +153%- TTTHE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE4× · 2017–2021 · $149k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- SCSMITH COLLEGE JUNIOR YEAR ABORDone grant, 2021 · $40k
- SCSMITH COLLEGE JUNIOR YEAR ABROADone grant, 2018 · $40k
- SCSMITH COLLEGE CAMPUS FUNDone grant, 2023 · $37k
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.
Poptech's mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, projects and ideas. founded in 1996 by bob metcalfe (inventor, ethernet) and john sculley (apple, pepsi), poptech originally provided a forum to critically…
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.…
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.
WGBH enriches people's lives through programs and services that educate, inspire, and entertain, fostering citizenship and culture, the joy of learning, and the power of diverse perspectives.
Form 990 - organization's mission or most significant activitiesboston impact initiative (bii) is a nonprofit impact investment fund and certified community development financial institution (cdfi). bii provides small businesses,…
Edvestors was founded in 2002 as a platform to connect boston philanthropists with the city's public schools by identifying, shaping, and matching donors with promising school improvement efforts. (see schedule o)
The brookings institution (brookings) is a nonprofit public policy organization that conducts in-depth, independent research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national, and global level.…
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
Sesame workshop's mission is to help kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder. (see schedule o)
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
To advance an economically just region where prosperity is shared across race and ethnicity.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Enterprise Community Partners Inc and the most unlike its peers is Boston Symphony Orchestra 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 39 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 UNCOMMON LAW ↗
- Who funds ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds EMBODIMENT INSTITUTE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds BECAUSE BLACK IS STILL BEAUTIFUL ↗
- Who funds SQUASHBUSTERS INC ↗
- Who funds ZERO TO THREE NATIONAL CENTER FOR INFANTS TODDLERS AND FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Boston Charitable Trust Fund City of Boston Trust Office ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY FOCUS LEGACY ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA 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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Ruth L Lee Fund 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.
- Enterprise Community Partners Inc — 22% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Ruth L Lee Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Ruth L Lee Fund 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.