· Private foundation
The Wade Family Foundation
Its FY2022 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
62% of The Wade Family Foundation’s FY2022 grant dollars went to University Of Notre Dame Du Lac, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2022 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Wade Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $421k. 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 FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k5 grants · $18k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $128k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $275k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC | $125,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME | $100,000 |
| CORNELL | $50,000 |
| MUSEUM OF SCIENCE | $25,000 |
| BELMONT HILL SCHOOL ANNUAL | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| BRIGHAM & WOMEN'S HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| ALZHIEMER ASSOC | $13,200 |
| ST ROCK HAITI FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| BELMONT DAY SCHOOL | $2,150 |
| FENWICK IMPROVEMENT 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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–20, $90k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 28% 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.
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.
21 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2021, 10 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, 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 FY2022, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $300k 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
- CSCATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC5× · 2017–2022 · $518k · revenue +67%
- ELEXCEPTIONAL LIVES INC2× · 2019–2020 · $65k · revenue +34%
Fairfield University2× · 2017–2021 · $55k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- GFGREENLIGHT FUND INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $40k · revenue +215%
- DMDECORDOVA MUSEUMone grant, 2019 · $10k
- BBBIG BROTHERSBIG SISTERS OF MAone grant, 2017 · $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.
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…
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.
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.
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…
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.…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Education and Research
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Belmont Day School Inc and the most unlike its peers is Fenwick Improvement Fund Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 32 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 University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds EXCEPTIONAL LIVES INC ↗
- Who funds Fairfield University ↗
- Who funds GREENLIGHT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds BELMONT DAY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED SOUTH END SETTLEMENTS ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds St Rock Haiti Foundation LTD ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds FENWICK IMPROVEMENT FUND 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: Cummings Foundation Grants Inc (Fka Oneworld Boston Inc) · Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Wade 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.
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Beacon Academy Inc — 1% of income from government
- Fairfield University — 1% of income from government
- Museum of Science — 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 Wade Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Wade 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.