· Public charity
Vermont Association of Conservation Districts Inc
Vermont association of conservation districts (vacd) promotes the conservation of vermont's soil, water, forests, wildlife and other natural resources by supporting vermont's fourteen natural resource conservation districts and implementing state-wide programs.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 91% of VERMONT ASSOCIATION OF CONSERVATION DISTRICTS INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 14 grants below total $334,163 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $382,217 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $48,054 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $162k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $145k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRANKLIN COUNTY NRCD | $89,745 |
| CALEDONIA COUNTY NRCD | $54,875 |
| BENNINGTON NRCD | $40,485 |
| ORLEANS COUNTY NRCD | $27,800 |
| WINOOSKI NRCD | $20,482 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| ESSEX COUNTY NRCD | $15,380 |
| BAKERSFIELD VFD | $15,000 |
| MOUNT HOLLY FD | $12,729 |
| HARTFORD VFA | $10,000 |
| CORINTH FIRE DEPARTMENT | $9,968 |
| WHITE RIVER NRCD | $7,380 |
| ALBANY VFD | $5,250 |
| MORRISTOWN FIRE DEPARTMENT | $5,069 |
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 (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 60% of your 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.
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 +51% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 6 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $73k 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
- FCFRANKLIN COUNTY NRCD7× · 2019–2025 · $388k
- WNWINOOSKI NRCD7× · 2019–2025 · $188k
- CCCALEDONIA COUNTY NATURAL RESOURCES5× · 2021–2025 · $157k
Funded once
- TOTOWN OF NEWPORTone grant, 2024 · $25k
- FFFAIRFIELD FIRE DEPARTMENTone grant, 2024 · $20k
- BVBRIDGEWATER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $17k · revenue +141%
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.
Fire Protection
Volunteer Fire Department
Volunteer Fire Department covering the towns of Topsham and Orange Vermont
Provide fire protection
Fire prevention and fire fighting
Volunteer Fire Department providing Fire and Rescue Services to the community
Community volunteer fire deparment
Fire department for the local community of stickleyville, va
Fire and rescue services
Fire protection
The mission of the vail volunteer fire department is to provide fire protection and also first responder services to a local community and rural area consisting of approximately 690 citizens.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bakersfield Volunteer Fire Department I and the most unlike its peers is Cold Hollow to Canada Incorporated. 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 59 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 CLARENDON FIRE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WEST PAWLET VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Hartland Volunteer Fire Department ↗
- Who funds BRIDGEWATER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds BAKERSFIELD VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT I ↗
- Who funds NEWBROOK VOLUNTEER FIRE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHELDON FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds EAST MONTPELIER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Ferrisburgh Volunteer Fire Dept Inc ↗
- Who funds CORINTH FIRE DEPARTMENT 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 Vermont Community Foundation · Center for Technology and Civic Life · Vermont Afterschool 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 Vermont Association of Conservation Districts 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.
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.