· Public charity
Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's (CBF) mission, simply stated, is to Save the Bay.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $558,397 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $668,182 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $109,785 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 $10k2 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $190k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $357k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Chesapeake Bay Trust | $146,692 |
| Conservation and Development Area Council | $108,326 |
| Center for Watershed Protection Inc | $101,543 |
| Capital Area Greenbelt Association Inc | $49,845 |
| Capital Area Intermediate Unit | $31,313 |
| VA Department of Conservation and Recreation Division of Natural Heritage | $31,092 |
| Virginia Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) | $27,885 |
| Future Harvest | $14,255 |
| Groundwork RVA | $13,323 |
| Let's Go 1-2-3 | $12,000 |
| Western MD RC&D Inc | $10,000 |
| Virginia Forage & Grassland Council | $6,365 |
| Smithsonian Institution | $5,758 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 59% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 19% of Chesapeake Bay Foundation 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. Read by recipient address, 43% of the giving stays in MD; read by stated purpose it is 23% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +51% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 2 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $62k 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
- CBCHESAPEAKE BAY TRUST5× · 2021–2025 · $619k · revenue +118%
- CRCAPITAL RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT AREA COUNCIL INC6× · 2018–2025 · $270k · revenue +51%
- LRLYNNHAVEN RIVER NOW3× · 2020–2022 · $230k · revenue +153%
Funded once
- DRDELMARVA RC&D INCone grant, 2021 · $231k · revenue -82% · 29% of their budget
- COCITY OF SALISBURYone grant, 2021 · $64k
- HSHEADWATERS SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICTone grant, 2021 · $61k
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.
The Center brings together diverse interests from the agricultural, forestry, and environmental communities for the purpose of retaining Maryland's working landscapes and the industries they support while protecting and improving the…
The mission of the rockbridge area conservation council (rockbridge conservation or rc) is to promote and enhance the protection, sustainable use, and stewardship of our community's natural and cultural resources.
Preserving and enhancing the scenic and environmental quality of the ecosystem of the chagrin river, lake erie and other ohio watersheds in a manner which assures a sustainable future for people, plants and animals.
The organization's mission is to protect, restore, and enhance the charles river and its watershed through science, advocacy, and the law. the organization develops science-based strategies to increase resilience, protect public health,…
The dan river basin association preserves and promotes the natural and cultural resources of the dan river basin through recreation, education, and stewardship.
Recognizing that a healthy environment is critical to the well-being and survival of all living things, new jersey conservation foundation is devoted to preserving land and protecting natural resources throughout new jersey's (continued on…
Our mission is to enrich the lives of all people in northeast ohio by conserving natural habitats, restoring the ecological value of our region's lands and waters, and expanding opportunities to connect people from all cultures to…
Preservation of essex county virginia's rural characteristics, its scenic lands, natural resources, and historic structures.
Wicomico Environmental Trust supports protecting the environment, with special emphasis on the Wicomico River, its tributaries, and the paleochannel, and other policies that preserve and protect nature in our county and the Chesapeake Bay…
Renew Richmond strives to build healthier, more self-empowered communities by involving local youth in agriculture and environmental sustainability. We do this by partnering with local public schools.
Protects and restores the hudson river from source to sea and safeguards drinking water supplies.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Capital Resource Conservation and Development Area Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is Southside ReLeaf. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 27 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 41 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 CHESAPEAKE BAY TRUST ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT AREA COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds DELMARVA RC&D INC ↗
- Who funds LYNNHAVEN RIVER NOW ↗
- Who funds The Elizabeth River Project ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR WATERSHED PROTECTION INC ↗
- Who funds FUTURE HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA INTERFAITH POWER & LIGHT ↗
- Who funds SHORERIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA FORAGE AND GRASSLAND COUNC ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA GREENBELT ASSOC INC ↗
- Who funds GROUNDWORK RVA INC ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Western Maryland Resource Conservation and Development ↗
- Who funds HORN FARM CENTER FOR AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Lets Go 123 ↗
- Who funds WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds HAMPTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds ENRICHMOND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
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: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment Inc · Virginia Environmental Endowment · The Community Foundation Inc · Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds · United States Endowment for Forestry · Robins Foundation · Chesapeake Bay Trust · Frederick Henry Prince Testamentary Trust · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America 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 Chesapeake Bay Foundation 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.
- Chesapeake Bay Trust — 100% of income from government
- Western Maryland Resource Conservation and Development — 100% of income from government
- Delmarva Rc&d Inc — 100% of income from government
- Center for Watershed Protection Inc — 64% of income from government
- Future Harvest Inc — 41% of income from government
- Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay Inc — 28% of income from government
- Chesapeake Conservancy Inc — 27% of income from government
- Shorerivers Inc — 13% 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.