· Private foundation
D B Ames Charitable Fdn - Tes Tr
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL | $2,500 |
| EGGLESTON SERVICES FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| UNION MISSION MINISTRIES | $1,500 |
| VIRGINIA BEACH COMMUNITY TR-EXEMPT | $1,407 |
| VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $1,407 |
| SYMPHONICITY | $1,407 |
| EASTERN VIRGINIA MEDICAL SCHOOL | $1,407 |
| VIRGINIA BEACH TR THE PSY DISABLED | $1,407 |
| ELIZABETH RIVER PROJECT | $533 |
| THE GOVERNORS SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS | $501 |
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 (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 96% 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 +20% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- TVTHE VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $19k · revenue +293%
- UMUNION MISSION MINISTRIES INC5× · 2021–2025 · $11k · revenue +6%
- SSSYMPHONICITY-THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF VIRGINIA BEACH6× · 2020–2025 · $11k · revenue +25%
Funded once
CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $4k · revenue +16%- NPNORFOLK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue -92%
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 Roanoke Symphony Orchestra provides a professional symphony orchestra of artistic excellence and integrity to enrich lives, to educate, and to entertain diverse audiences in western Virginia with the highest quality instrumental and…
The richmond symphony performs, teaches and champions music to inspire and unite our communities.
The endowment's mission is to improve the quality of the environment by using its capital, expertise, and resources to fund projects and programs that encourage all sectors to work together to prevent pollution, improve water quality,…
Believing that music has the power to inspire, the fredericksburg symphony will fulfill this mission by enriching the community with live music. the symphony brings performances, educational programs, and community engagement initiatives…
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
Provide financial support to virginia symphony orchestra by administering funds and property, engaging in other activities as qualify for an exempt organization, solicit and receive funds and property by gift, transfer, devise or bequest…
The virginia opera association, inc. works to attract, educate, develop and engage a diverse base of audiences, volunteers and professionals through the promotion and production of quality performances in the commonwealth of virginia.
Facilitating statewide collaboration among Virginia's food banks, partners, and neighbors to improve nutrition security and empower strong, healthy communities.
The foundation determines the patentability and obtains patents on virginia commonwealth university (vcu) inventions and markets and licenses such inventions to commerical entities. the foundation's activities promote research efforts at…
The general purpose of the northern neck orchestra corporation is to produce orchestral and chamber music concerts, plus related educational programs, in the northen neck peninsula of virginia, for the enjoyment and enrichment of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the most unlike its peers is Union Mission Ministries Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 18 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 THE VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds UNION MISSION MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONICITY-THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF VIRGINIA BEACH ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds THE EGGLESTON SERVICES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORFOLK COLLEGIATE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE GOVERNOR'S SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOODBANK OF SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds NORFOLK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Elizabeth River Project ↗
- Who funds EDMARC 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: Patricia and Douglas Perry Foundation DBA The Perry Family Foundation · Townebank Foundation · Hampton Roads Community Foundation · Goode Family Foundation · Birdsong Charitable Foundation · Sandler Center for the Performing Arts Foundation · The Pruden Foundation · The Helen G Gifford Foundation · Business Consortium for Arts Support · The Dalis Foundation · Beazley Foundation Incorporated · Tidewater Jewish 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 D B Ames Charitable Fdn - Tes Tr 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 or a single department — 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.