· Private foundation
The Waterwheel 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
67% of The Waterwheel Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to The Vermont Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 50 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The Waterwheel Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 63 organizations, $1M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What it funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.
Where the money goes
Grants by size, and the largest recipients.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k28 grants · $127k
- $10k–50k44 grants · $861k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $348k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CONSERVATIVE LAW FOUNDATION | $70,907 |
| PHANS FOR RACIAL EQUITY | $64,492 |
| THE CONSCIOUS ALLIANCE | $61,089 |
| PROJECT HOPE - THE PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE HEALT | $51,799 |
| BURLINGTON CITY ARTS | $50,000 |
| VERMONT LAND TRUST | $50,000 |
| STEPS TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE | $49,200 |
| HEAD COUNT INC | $44,492 |
| MOCKINGBIRD FOUNDATION | $44,492 |
| DIVIDED SKY FOUNDATION | $44,492 |
| THE FLYNN CENTER | $40,000 |
| LAKE CHAMPLAIN COMMUNITY SAILING CENTER | $35,958 |
| HUNGER FREE AMERICA | $32,400 |
| COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS | $32,400 |
| LINCOLNVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $25,000 |
Does the money reach high-need areas?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.
Its human-services grants (FY18–24, $295k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 43% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
How this is measured
Which US states its grants reach
How this is measured
Who it funds again
Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.
Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +40% since the first grant, against +26% for those funded once.
83 repeat relationships: 39 still active in FY2022, 44 since wound down; 112 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 56% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $587k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
How this is measured
Backed again, and grew
THE DIVIDED SKY FOUNDATION CORPORATION3× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +356%- STSTEPS TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $424k · revenue +195%
- BCBURLINGTON CITY ARTS FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $333k · revenue +218%
Funded once
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEone grant, 2020 · $94k · revenue -66%- COCITY OF HOPEone grant, 2017 · $50k
- PFPhans for Racial Equityone grant, 2021 · $46k · revenue -81% · 57% of their budget
How this is measured
Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
Closest unfunded matches
The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Western Resource Advocates (WRA) is a regional nonprofit advocacy organization fighting climate change and its impacts to sustain the environment, economy, and people of the West. As the region's go-to experts for more than three decades,…
To gather and share quality food and nurture partnerships so that no one in vermont will go hungry.
Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.
Vermont public informs, educates, and entertains through public service journalism and enlightening content rooted in vermont. our storytelling enriches lives and fosters community connection and understanding.
The Boulder Watershed Collective is a 501c3 non-profit stakeholder-driven organization established to address forested watershed health,resiliency and stewardship. We have three program areas: ClimateAdaptation and Resilience Watershed…
NOFA-NH actively promotes organic, regenerative, ecologically sound farming, gardening, eating, and land care practices for healthy communities. NOFA-NH helps people build local, just, and sustainable food systems.
Grist is an independent, non profit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
We Dont Waste increases food access and protects the planet by rescuing and repurposing food, while educating and advocating to increase food security and decrease food waste.
Willing hands delivers fresh food to more than 80 social service organizations throughout the upper valley of new hampshire and vermont that serve as food access points to our community. fresh food is recovered from local farms, grocery…
Zero foodprint is mobilizing the food world around agricultural climate solutions. our work aims to create a circular economy that incentivizes practices that actively draw down carbon dioxide and offer our best hope of addressing the…
The mission of energy action network (ean) is to support vermont in making evidence-based energy and climate decisions that are grounded in high-quality data and analysis, and collaboratively developed for effective and durable progress.
To end the injustice of hunger for everyone and prioritize the people most affected by hunger to make a permanent systemic change.
How this is measured
210 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.
How this is measured
Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 210 of the 328 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.
Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee
Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.
Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding
A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds THE VERMONT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE DIVIDED SKY FOUNDATION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds STEPS TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds BURLINGTON CITY ARTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MOCKINGBIRD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HUNGER FREE AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT PARKS FOREVER INC ↗
- Who funds KIIN BEH EDUCATION CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS ON THE BALL INC ↗
- Who funds INTERVALE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Voices for Global Change ↗
- Who funds LAKE CHAMPLAIN COMMUNITY SAILING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds El Dorado Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Common Roots Inc ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON GLOBAL LTD ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE GREATER CAPITAL REGION INC ↗
- Who funds VERMONT LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds HEAD COUNT INC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSCIOUS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds STREET MEDICINE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds KING STREET CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FLYNN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS LTD ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CLUB INC DEBONIS ↗
- Who funds GENERATOR INC ↗
- Who funds CHAMPLAIN VALLEY OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLNVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GROOVESAFE INC ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE RIVERKEEPER ↗
Co-funders
Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Vermont Community Foundation · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · The Windham Foundation Inc · National Life Group Charitable Foundation Inc · Patagoniaorg · Lintilhac Foundation Inc · George W Mergens Foundation · Vermont Council on the Arts Inc · The Onda Foundation Inc · RUTH & PETER METZ FAMILY FOUNDATION co THOMAS PHELAN · Antonio B and Rita M Pomerleau Foundation Inc · Vermont Afterschool Inc
How this is measured
How much its grantees rely on government
Each dot is one organization The Waterwheel Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Waterwheel Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.
- Vermont Afghan Alliance: 79% of income from government
- Lamoille Housing Partnership Inc: 73% of income from government
- Steps to End Domestic Violence Inc: 71% of income from government
- North Central Vermont Recovery Center Inc: 69% of income from government
- Vermont Humanities Council: 67% of income from government
- Age Well Inc: 60% of income from government
- Committee On Temporary Shelter Inc: 52% of income from government
- Newark Public Radio Inc: 51% of income from government
- Randolph Area Community Development Corporation: 51% of income from government
- One Arts Inc: 48% of income from government
- King Street Center Inc: 43% of income from government
- Vermont Rural Education Collaborative Inc: 43% of income from government
- Vermont Land Trust Inc: 42% of income from government
- Connecticut River Watershed Council Inc: 40% of income from government
- Upper Valley Haven: 38% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition: 37% of income from government
- Covenant House New Jersey Inc: 34% of income from government
- South Park Inn Inc: 29% of income from government
- Catamount Film & Arts Company: 27% of income from government
- Partnerships for Literacy and Learning: 27% of income from government
- Hansen Foundation Inc: 25% of income from government
- Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity Inc: 23% of income from government
- Friends Center for Children Inc: 21% of income from government
- The Vermont River Conservancy Inc: 21% of income from government
- The Green Mountain Club Inc Debonis: 17% of income from government
- Intervale Center Inc: 13% of income from government
- Vermont Parks Forever Inc: 8% of income from government
- Vermont Grass Farmers Association: 7% of income from government
- Friends of the Winooski River Inc: 7% of income from government
- Burlington City Arts Foundation Inc: 6% of income from government
- Northern Stage Company: 5% of income from government
- White River Partnership Inc: 4% of income from government
- Communities Revolutionizing Open Public Spaces: 3% of income from government
- Stowe Story Labs Inc: 3% of income from government
- Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation: 2% of income from government
- Lake Champlain Maritime Museum at Basin Harbor Inc: 2% of income from government
- Champlain Valley Exposition Inc: 2% of income from government
- Vermont Studio Center Inc: 2% of income from government
- Kingdom County Productions Inc: 1% of income from government
- Lake Champlain Land Trust Inc: 1% of income from government
- Columbia Riverkeeper: 1% of income from government
- Chill Foundation: 0% of income from government
- Northwestern Medical Center: 0% of income from government
- Flynn Center for the Performing Arts Ltd: 0% of income from government
- Vermont Journalism Trust Ltd: 0% of income from government
- Common Roots Inc: 0% of income from government
- The Vermont Community Foundation: 0% of income from government
How this is measured
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Waterwheel Foundation?
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