· Private foundation
The Whitehead Charitable 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $26k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $238k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE | $163,000 |
| RAISING EXPECTATIONS INC | $75,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $13,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $13,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 51% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +65% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 6 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 FY2024, 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
- WIWHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH8× · 2017–2024 · $653k · revenue +131%
- BCBERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC INC5× · 2017–2021 · $423k · revenue +18%
- RERAISING EXPECTATIONS INC5× · 2020–2024 · $185k · revenue +177%
Funded once
- MCMAB COMMUNITY SERVICES INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $75k · revenue +34%
- CACLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INCone grant, 2022 · $17k · revenue -2%
- CCCOOLIDGE CORNER THEATERone grant, 2023 · $15k
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.
To raise awareness about the potential to reduce environmental harm by shifting electricity use to particular times; to encourage the development and spread of common protocols for this practice.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
Acec research institute serve as the leading source of knowledge and thought leadership for creating a more sustainable, safe, secure, and technically advanced built environment. identify, fund, and provide industry wide research forecasts…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The climate institute is organized for the purpose of educating the general public and policy makers as to the gravity of potential climate change, exploring the policy implications of the latest scientific findings on climate modelling…
The purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is World Resources Institute and the most unlike its peers is The John Whitehead Family 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.
13 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. 13 of the 18 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 WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds RAISING EXPECTATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOHN WHITEHEAD FAMILY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ACLU FOUNDATION OF GEORGIA INC ↗
- Who funds MAB COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST TRUST ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Bicycle Coalition Of Greater Philadelphia ↗
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: American Online Giving Foundation 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 Whitehead Charitable 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.
- Mab Community Services Inc — 69% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research — 7% of income from government
- Berklee College of Music Inc — 1% 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 Whitehead Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Whitehead Charitable 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.