· Private foundation
The Sumner Scholarship Endowment Foundation Inc
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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PROCTOR ACADEMY | $30,000 |
| BYERSCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE ISLAND INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS | $15,000 |
| ISLAND READERS & WRITERS | $13,500 |
| SKOWHEGAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE | $13,000 |
| NORTHEAST HARBOR LIBRARY | $13,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MAINE FOUNDATION | $10,548 |
| THE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE | $10,000 |
| THE SPRINGBOARD SCHOOL AT LUBAVITCH ON THE PALISADES | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 34% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The Sumner Scholarship Endowment Foundation Inc’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.
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 +63% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- PAPROCTOR ACADEMY9× · 2017–2025 · $322k · revenue +45%
- BFBYERSCHOOL FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2025 · $182k · revenue +55%
- IIIsland Institute7× · 2018–2025 · $160k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- RBRUSSELL BYERS CHARTER SCHOOLone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue +19%
- AFAcadia Family Centerone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue -99%
- TOTOWN OF MOUNT DESERTone grant, 2024 · $10k
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 Island School provides a flexible learning environment where each child is known and celebrated.
Inspiring young scholars to contribute their wisdom, compassion, and personal best in the classroom, the community and the world.
Rippowam Cisqua School creates independent thinkers, confident communicators, and engaged leaders who respect and contribute meaningfully to a diverse and increasingly complex global society.
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
An independent school providing a comprehensive educational program for children from K through 12th grade.
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…
Hca is a public charter school offering rigorous, personalized, project- based education to maine students in grades 5-12.
Island pacific academy (ipa) is a k-12 independent, coed, college preparatory school
We create confident learners who lead lives of intellectual curiosity, self-knowledge, and social responsibility.
Independent school offering programs for infants, toddlers, preschool, and elementary school aged children with and without hearing loss.
Education
The purpose of the school is to promote, advance and sponsor charitable and educational activities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Russell Byers Charter School and the most unlike its peers is Words Without Borders Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 19 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 PROCTOR ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds BYERSCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Island Institute ↗
- Who funds ISLAND READERS & WRITERS AN INITIATIVE FOR MAINE CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds SKOWHEGAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE CLUB ↗
- Who funds Words Without Borders Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST HARBOR LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds ANTIGUA INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds University of Maine Foundation ↗
- Who funds RUSSELL BYERS CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CAMP BEECH CLIFF ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER ON THE PALISADES ↗
- Who funds Acadia Family Center ↗
- Who funds RAINIER PREP ↗
- Who funds Maine Seacoast Mission ↗
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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Colket Family Foundation · Florence V Burden Foundation · Hattie a and Fred C Lynam Trust · Cornelia Cogswell Rossi Foundation Inc · Diana Davis Spencer Foundation Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Sumner Scholarship Endowment Foundation Inc 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Jewish Community Center On the Palisades — 4% 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.