Directory of Massachusetts Charities:
General Interest

Thank you for helping to create a useful and reliable central Directory of Massachusetts Charities. This will take you less than five minutes, and will directly benefit your organization in fundraising.

I. Introduction

The purpose of this Directory is to provide for donors, grant-makers, philanthropic advisors, volunteers, journalists, scholars, students and anyone else interested, a complete and accurate list of all the charities of general philanthropic interest in Massachusetts.

Its first version will include all public (501c3) charities that address broad public issues for broad public benefit, and that seek funds from the general public. It will not include organizations of interest only to their members, or to their local communities.

The list will be sorted by philanthropic field (this is where we need your help), and analyzed within those fields by several parameters: date of IRS authorization, geographic distribution, and income.

For example, if a prospective donor is thinking about supporting Massachusetts charities in the field of Dance, he can go to the Directory and find a complete list of them. He can then sort them by geographic location, income level, or age of institution, and go to each of their websites (here also we need your help) to learn more about each one.

Philanthropy has always worked by individual charities reaching out through personal networks to individual donors, and vice-versa. This Directory will make it possible for people to explore philanthropy by fields of interest, and thus to discover fields and charities they might not otherwise know, that they would enjoy supporting. It will make our Massachusetts philanthropic sector fully visible and readily accessible for the first time, leading to greater productivity and participation than ever before. This new system will be the first of its kind, anywhere.

II. Instructions

Once you find your charity on the list, send us an email (a link is provided) with the following information:

1) Please tell us if the name and address are accurate.
2) Check the field designation (in the column marked Field) and please verify to us that it is accurate.
3) Using the taxonomy, please specify up to two additional fields in descending order of your institution’s commitment to them in terms of budget dollars and staff time.
4) In percentages, indicate the rough portion of your institutional attention devoted to each field.
5) Please tell us your organization’s website address, if you have one.

There is an email link on the taxonomy list page so that you can send us the above information. Please CLICK HERE to get started.

Thanks for your help!