· Private foundation
Tower Family Fund 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $60k
- $10k–50k53 grants · $970k
- $50k–250k30 grants · $2.7M
- $250k+7 grants · $5.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER BUFFALO | $2,000,000 |
| MARTHA'S VINEYARD HOSPITAL | $1,000,000 |
| HARBORLIGHT COMMUNITY PARTNERS DBA HARBORLIGHT HOMES | $1,000,000 |
| POWER OF PLACE LEARNING COMMUNITIES INC | $647,895 |
| BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA | $250,000 |
| BURCHFIELD-PENNEY ART CENTER | $250,000 |
| BUFFALO AKG ART MUSEUM | $250,000 |
| GLOUCESTER MARINE GENOMICS INSTITUTE | $200,000 |
| YMCA OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD | $200,000 |
| PENIKESE ISLAND SCHOOL | $150,000 |
| WALNUT HILL SCHOOL OF THE ARTS | $125,000 |
| DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE | $110,000 |
| PATHWAYS FOR CHILDREN | $100,000 |
| LUMINARY IMPACT FUND | $100,000 |
| ESSEX COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $5.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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 7% of Tower Family Fund 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 +37% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
144 repeat relationships — 73 still active in FY2025, 71 since wound down; 26 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
YMCA OF THE NORTH SHORE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $3.1M · revenue +121%
POWER OF PLACE LEARNING COMMUNITIES3× · 2023–2025 · $1.7M · revenue ×11 · 83% of their budget
BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER6× · 2020–2025 · $1.4M · revenue +51%
Funded once
- HHHARBORLIGHT HOMESone grant, 2024 · $1.0M
- NHNAVIGATOR HOMESone grant, 2024 · $1.0M
- CPCHILMARK PRESCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $250k
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.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Brighton marine, inc. provides military and veteran families with comprehensive campus-based quality health care, as well as affordable and supportive housing for at-risk veterans and their families.
Mjhs health system is a charitable not-for-profit established to support the activities of affiliated organizations. mjhs is built on the core values of compassion, dignity and respect, first established by the four brooklyn ladies in…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
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,…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To manage the brooklyn navy yard for the city of new york, specifically to expand job opportunities for new yorkers by fostering the development of small businesses.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustful environment through the expertise, committment, and compassion of our family of caregivers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Buffalo and Erie County and the most unlike its peers is Parker Hill Orthopedic Research 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 37 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
147 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. 147 of the 221 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 YMCA OF THE NORTH SHORE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds POWER OF PLACE LEARNING COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds STILLPOINT MARTHA'S VINEYARD INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CAPE ANN MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds GLOUCESTER MARINE GENOMICS INSTITUTE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds YMCA of Martha's Vineyard Inc ↗
- Who funds ISLAND GROWN INITIATIVE LTD ↗
- Who funds ROSWELL PARK ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKPORT MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds PATHWAYS FOR CHILDRENINC ↗
- Who funds NEW PROFIT INC ↗
- Who funds ESSEX COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WALNUT HILL CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAWYER LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE OPEN DOOR CAPE ANN FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds NIAGARA LUTHERAN HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE FIELD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Opportunities Collaborative for Students with Special Needs Inc ↗
- Who funds DAEMEN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Woodwell Climate Research Center 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: The Peter and Elizabeth C Tower Foundation · Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · The Western New York Foundation · Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Inc · James H Cummings Foundation Inc · First Niagara Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · The Baird Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · Grigg-Lewis Foundation Inc · Cullen Foundation · Martha's Vineyard Bank Charitable 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 Tower Family Fund 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.
- Ccb Foundation Inc — 100% of income from government
- Marthas Vineyard Youth Task Force Inc — 100% of income from government
- Pathways for Childreninc — 86% of income from government
- Health Imperatives Inc — 79% of income from government
- Martha's Vineyard Mediation Program Inc — 71% of income from government
- Northeast Native Network of Kinship and — 44% of income from government
- Cape Ann Museum Inc — 38% of income from government
- Martha's Vineyard Community Foundation Inc — 34% of income from government
- Vista Life Innovations Inc — 33% of income from government
- The Yard Inc — 28% of income from government
- Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute Incorporated — 16% of income from government
- Care Dimensions Inc — 14% of income from government
- Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc — 11% of income from government
- Leap for Education Inc — 9% of income from government
- Wellspring House Inc — 9% of income from government
- Raw Art Works Inc — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Ymca of the North Shore Inc — 6% of income from government
- Hospice of Martha's Vineyard Inc Dba Hospice and Palliative Care of Martha's — 5% of income from government
- Rockport Music Inc — 4% of income from government
- Montserrat College of Art Inc — 3% of income from government
- Sassafras Earth Education Inc — 3% of income from government
- Action Inc — 3% of income from government
- Martha's Vineyard Community Services Inc — 3% of income from government
- Cape Cod Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Essex County Community Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Harbor Homes of Martha's Vineyard Inc — 1% of income from government
- Island Housing Trust Corporation — 1% of income from government
- New England Baptist Hospital — 1% of income from government
- Circuit Arts Inc — 1% of income from government
- Cape Ann Art Haven Inc — 1% of income from government
- Berklee College of Music Inc — 1% of income from government
- Biodiversityworks Inc — 0% of income from government
- Island Grown Initiative Ltd — 0% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Choate Rosemary Hall Foundation Incorporated — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Tower Family Fund Inc?
Find your warmest path to Tower Family Fund Inc 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.