GRANT GRAPH · the independent grant data index

Who funds animal shelters in Massachusetts? Grant data from tax filings and federal listings

Name: animal shelter grant funding data (Grant Graph)
Creator: Grant Graph
License: public domain sources; compilation freely citable with attribution

From 2025-2026 IRS filings: 97 grants totaling $1.3 million went to animal shelters-related work in Massachusetts. The largest funders, the typical grant size, and what is open at the federal level right now, all from public records.

The largest private funders of animal shelters in Massachusetts, from their own tax filings

Funder	Grants	Total
Milton Animal League Inc	2	$730,919
NETWORK FOR GOOD	2	$102,541
The Chicago Community Trust	1	$80,000
AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC	6	$68,363
PAYPAL CHARITABLE GIVING FUND	4	$61,040
FILENO DIGREGORIO FOUNDATION	2	$42,000
RED ACRE FARM INC	3	$26,000
SHIPLEY FOUNDATION INC #0755496	1	$25,000
FRANKLIN PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATION	2	$16,772
AMAZONSMILE FOUNDATION	13	$16,737

Across all funders: 97 grants, $1.3 million total, median grant $1,853.

Largest recipients in Massachusetts

Recipient	Grants	Total
Town of Milton Animal Shelter	2	$730,919
ANIMAL SHELTER INC	8	$112,992
ANIMAL SHELTER OF MARTHAS VINEYARD INC	2	$80,140
SECOND CHANCE ANIMAL SHELTER	10	$68,950
FOREVER PAWS ANIMAL SHELTER	5	$56,731
NORTHEAST ANIMAL SHELTER	10	$33,717
QUINCY ANIMAL SHELTER INC	7	$31,664
MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS	1	$25,000
LIGHTHOUSE ANIMAL SHELTER	1	$19,825
NORTHEAST ANIMAL SHELTER INC	3	$19,156

Open federal opportunities addressing animal shelters (nonprofit-eligible)

Federal opportunities are listed nationally: a nonprofit in Massachusetts can apply to any of them, so this table is not filtered by state.

Matched against the full synopsis text of every posted opportunity, not the listing title alone; restricted to opportunities open to nonprofit applicants. Federal programs rarely use the phrase "animal shelter"; this table also matches the agency vocabulary: animal welfare, companion animal.

Number	Title	Agency	Award range	Closes
No open, nonprofit-eligible federal opportunity currently addresses this cause in its synopsis. That is the honest answer today.

grants.gov's own loose keyword search returns 371 listings mentioning "animal shelters" anywhere (retrieved 2026-08-03); the table above is our stricter relevance cut.

What these numbers do not say

Private-funder figures come from 990 and 990-PF filings as released by the IRS; filings lag reality by one to two years, and organizations below the e-file thresholds are not represented.
A funder appearing here funded this cause historically. It is not a statement that they are accepting applications.
Filings include corrections: voided checks, returned grants and corpus-distribution adjustments appear as negative amounts and are counted as filed. They are a fraction of a percent of the total.
Cause matching is keyword-based against grant purpose text and recipient names; it undercounts grants described in other words.

Grant Graph is an independent, free index built from public data: IRS Form 990 series e-file releases and the grants.gov API. It is not affiliated with grants.gov or any federal agency. Every figure above is reproducible from the cited public sources.