· Private foundation
The Vertex Foundation Inc
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
88% of The Vertex Foundation Inc’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Charities Aid Foundation America, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 10 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year The Vertex Foundation Inc named its own grantees at scale: 31 organizations, $7M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k95 grants · $466k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $307k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+6 grants · $4.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES INC | $1,215,000 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION | $1,168,198 |
| I2LEARNING FOUNDATION | $1,160,000 |
| CITY YEAR | $510,000 |
| THE MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $416,180 |
| BARRETSTOWN FOUNDATION | $275,000 |
| MUSEUM OF SCIENCE | $215,500 |
| GRUBSTREET | $200,000 |
| DONORSCHOOSEORG | $170,000 |
| ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM | $135,106 |
| ENTHUSE CHARITABLE TRUST | $130,000 |
| RIZE MASSACHUSETTS | $125,000 |
| CAMP SUNSHINE AT SEBAGO LAKE | $100,000 |
| ELEMENTARY INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE | $75,000 |
| BOSTON CHILDREN'S MUSEUM | $56,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $239k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 23% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 67% of The Vertex 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 +67% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
87 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2019, 60 since wound down; 341 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $332k 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
- RMRonald McDonald House Global3× · 2019–2022 · $1.7M · revenue +82%
DIRECT RELIEF2× · 2019–2020 · $1.1M · revenue +67%
CITY YEAR INC2× · 2019–2024 · $534k · revenue +0%
Funded once
- MGMASS GENERAL BRIGHAM INCORPORATEDone grant, 2020 · $5.0M
- ILi2 LEARNING FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2019 · $1.2M · revenue -65% · 44% of their budget
- BCBoston Charitable Trust Fund City of Boston Trust Officeone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue -100%
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.
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
The mission of the roundtable is to make massachusetts the most desirable place to live, work and do business by engaging private sector executives and public leaders to ensure access to a robust, diverse and talented workforce that…
Mass general brigham health plan's mission is to promote the health and wellness of our members, and to help ensure equitable, affordbale health care for the diverse communities we serve.
New england law/boston dedicates itself to preparing students to be successful lawyers and leaders in the public and private sectors through integrated practical, theoretical and ethical education of the highest caliber and to contributing…
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.
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Childrens Museum and the most unlike its peers is I2 Learning Foundation 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 34 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 — 0.0% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 432 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds i2 LEARNING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds Boston Charitable Trust Fund City of Boston Trust Office ↗
- Who funds Boston Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION INC ↗
- Who funds SCRIPPS HEALTH ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds GRUB STREET INC ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THE FOOD BANK OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER FALL RIVER INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds CAMP SUNSHINE AT SEBAGO LAKE INC ↗
- Who funds ELEMENTARY INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE ↗
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 · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Barr Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Highland Street Connection and Subsidiaries · Charities Aid Foundation America · Rockland Trust - Blue Hills Charitable Foundation · Eastern Cambridge Foundation · Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation Inc · Eversource Energy Foundation Inc
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 Vertex 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- United Way of Massachusetts Bay Inc — 23% of income from government
- Horizons for Homeless Children — 21% of income from government
- Mystic River Watershed Association Inc — 18% of income from government
- Just-a-Start Corporation — 16% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Project Citizenship Inc — 10% of income from government
- Citizen Schools Inc — 8% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Grub Street Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Childrens Museum — 1% of income from government
- Edvestors Inc — 1% of income from government
- Hope and Comfort Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wentworth Institute of Technology Inc — 1% of income from government
- Mount Saint Mary's University Inc — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Science — 0% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation 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.