Obadiah Browns Benevolent Fund
Oak Park, IL · EIN 05-6016302. Reported 56 grants totalling $650,579 to 40 organizations across tax years 2021-2025, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. The IRS has no activity classification on file for this one, so we cannot tell you whether it is a community foundation or a single-institution support fund. The recipient list below is the better guide.
- How spread out its giving is. 40 distinct organizations, with 11% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
- How much its list changes. 20% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 4 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 56% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% median for private foundations. It describes the organizations it already funds, not whether it would consider a new one.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $10,000. Half of what it reported fell between $7,575 and $15,000; the smallest was $5,110 and the largest $32,000. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wellesley Friends Meeting Inc | Wellesley, MA | $72,000 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Wellesley Friends Meeting | Wellesley, MA | $37,500 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Quaker Voluntary Service Inc | Sanford, NC | $35,575 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Vassalboro Friends Meeting | Vassalboro, ME | $27,000 | 2 | 2 | 2025 |
| Dover Friends Meeting | Dover, NH | $25,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Friends Center for Children Inc | New Haven, CT | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Windham Friends Meeting | Windham, ME | $23,109 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Midcoast Friends Meeting | Damariscotta, ME | $22,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| New England Yearly Meeting of Friends | Worcester, MA | $21,480 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Beacon Hill Friends House | Boston, MA | $20,400 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Friends Camp a Summer Camp Operated By New England Yearly Meeting | South China, ME | $20,110 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Moses Brown School | Providence, RI | $20,000 | 2 | 2 | 2025 |
| Mt Toby Friends Meeting | Leverett, MA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| New England Yearly Meeting of Friends | Worcester, MA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Friends Peace Teams Inc | Saint Louis, MO | $19,985 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Mt Toby Monthly Meeting of Friends | Leverett, MA | $16,900 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Thee Quaker Project | Philadelphia, PA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Durham Friends Meeting | Durham, ME | $14,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Monadnonck Quaker Meeting | Jaffrey, NH | $12,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Hanover Friends Meeting | Hanover, NH | $11,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Friends School of Portland | Cumb Foreside, ME | $10,425 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Concord Friends Meeting | Canterbury, NH | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Dartmouth Historical and Arts Society Inc | Dartmouth, MA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Friends Publishing Corporation | Philadelphia, PA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Greater Portland Family Promise | Portland, ME | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Moses Brown School | Providence, RI | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| New Bedford Friends Meeting | New Bedford, MA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Salmon Bay Friends Meeting | Edmonds, WA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| West Brattleboro Quaker Worship Group | West Brattleboro, VT | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| West Falmouth Friends Meeting | Falmouth, MA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| New England Yearly Meeting of Friends | Worcester, MA | $9,209 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Friends World Com for Consultation Section of the Americas | Philadelphia, PA | $8,200 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Greater Philadelphia Film Office | Philadelphia, PA | $8,050 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Midcoast Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends | Damariscotta, ME | $7,800 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Mattapoisett Friends Meeting | Mattapoisett, MA | $7,500 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Salt Lake Friends Meeting | Murray, UT | $7,200 | 1 | 1 | 2025 |
| Cambridge Friends Meeting | Cambridge, MA | $6,500 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Allen's Neck Friends Meeting | South Dartmouth, MA | $6,136 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Beacon Hill Friends House Inc | Boston, MA | $6,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Barclay Press Inc | Newberg, OR | $5,500 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
14 of 40 (35%) received money in more than one year over the 5 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What the money was for
Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.
- Wellesley Friends Meeting
Support for Black Quaker Project - Mt Toby Friends Meeting
Replace Roof on Meetinghouse - Beacon Hill Friends House
Support Vocational Discernment Workshops - Midcoast Friends Meeting
Meetinghouse Accessibility Project - Quaker Voluntary Service
Fellows Testimonial Project - Vassalboro Friends Meeting
Support for Ministry of the Wild project
What kind of organizations it funds
By the activity category the IRS assigns each recipient, for the 16 of 40 recipients we could match to a registered organization. The categories are the IRS's, not ours -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 14 | $152,573 | $10,000 |
| 2022 | 8 | $101,124 | $12,357 |
| 2023 | 11 | $132,705 | $10,425 |
| 2024 | 11 | $115,902 | $8,050 |
| 2025 | 12 | $148,275 | $10,000 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
42% of its giving went to organizations in Massachusetts. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are a sign of overlapping priorities and nothing more: they do not show that any of these funders would consider a new organization. Each page says what its filings show.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $10,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Massachusetts.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Related guides
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from Obadiah Browns Benevolent Fund's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 5 returns (tax years 2021-2025). Grant figures are from its returns. Recipient classifications, the concentration and retention figures and the funders that support the same organizations are our own calculations from them, described in how we build this.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 12 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 0 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.
Address of record on the latest return: 715 South Blvd Unit 304, Oak Park, IL, 60302.
EIN 05-6016302 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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