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Virginia · Public charity

Firstspark Inc

Promote quality early childhood care and education for young children ages birth to 5 and provide prenatal resources for expectant women.

$3.2M
Granted FY2025(still arriving)
11
Grants FY2025
12
Organizations funded FY2024
33%
First-time grantees FY2024
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2025
$234,907
Largest grant, FY2025
$725,269
Organizations funded a year
10 to 17
FY2021 to FY2024
States reached, FY2025
1
Total assets, FY2025
$1.0M

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2024, 33% of the organizations Firstspark Inc funded were first-time grantees, receiving 27% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $902k went to new ones.

50%100%’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’22’23’24
Human ServicesCommunity ImprovementOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY2025still arriving10$3.2M10%
FY202412$3.3M33%
FY202310$1.9M70%
FY202217$295k47%
FY202115$1.1Mn/a
99% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2025.

Human Services$8.9MEducation$464kRecreation & Sports$430kYouth Development$15kEmployment$3kOther$0

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2021 to FY2025, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Downtown Hampton Child Care Council Inc$1,719,791423%
Precious Jewels LLC$1,063,6482n/a
Young Men's Christian Association of the Virginia Peninsulas$949,01831%
Grand Kids Child Care Center$779,0663n/a
Arms of the King$678,8934n/a
Hampton Roads International Montessori S$670,518314%
Tick Tock Around the Clock LLC$655,8513n/a
Horizons Unlimited Early Learning Center$501,1623n/a
Warwick Kids Academy Operated by Dee Care LLC$498,6922n/a
City of Newport News Parks & Recreation$429,5282n/a
Show all 28 grantees
All grantees of Firstspark Inc by total granted
GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Downtown Hampton Child Care Council Inc$1,719,791423%
Precious Jewels LLC$1,063,6482n/a
Young Men's Christian Association of the Virginia Peninsulas$949,01831%
Grand Kids Child Care Center$779,0663n/a
Arms of the King$678,8934n/a
Hampton Roads International Montessori S$670,518314%
Tick Tock Around the Clock LLC$655,8513n/a
Horizons Unlimited Early Learning Center$501,1623n/a
Warwick Kids Academy Operated by Dee Care LLC$498,6922n/a
City of Newport News Parks & Recreation$429,5282n/a
Children of Valour$279,8293n/a
Tots Around the Clock LLC$245,5672n/a
Little Light House Care Center$229,2362n/a
First Baptist Church Denbigh Child Development Center and Academy$193,3151n/a
Ashton Day Care$160,1591n/a
Bethel Temple Assembly of God$142,4932n/a
Faith Child Care Center$139,8832n/a
Amazing Child Care and Learning Academy$112,6532n/a
Hampton Roads Community Action Program Inc$95,35311%
El Roi Childcare & Learning Center$80,1542n/a
Someplace Like Home$69,2352n/a
Royal Care Academy$15,9222n/a
New Gen Kids LLC$15,0001n/a
Resurrection Lutheran School LLC$15,0002n/a
Agape Early Learning Center$15,0001n/a
Kiddy City Daycare LLC$15,0001n/a
Panda's Playhouse$12,2362n/a
Sunshine Faces$6,5001n/a

Plus 7 recipients with no EIN on record ($70k), not named here.

Nonprofits that may fit its grantmaking

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a set of overlaps that mostly run through this funder rather than between each other.

Amazonsmile Foundation
Amazonsmile FoundationWA0.6× affinity4 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Compare Firstspark Inc with peer funders

About Firstspark Inc

How much does Firstspark Inc give?
Firstspark Inc reported 11 grants totaling $3,192,516 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 10 and 17 organizations a year over FY2021 to FY2024.
What does Firstspark Inc fund?
By grant dollars over FY2021 to FY2025, its largest causes are Human Services (91%), Education (5%), Recreation & Sports (4%).
Who are Firstspark Inc's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2021 to FY2025: Downtown Hampton Child Care Council Inc ($1.7M), Precious Jewels LLC ($1.1M), Young Men's Christian Association of the Virginia Peninsulas ($949k).
Does Firstspark Inc fund new organizations?
In FY2024, 33% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Which funders back the same organizations as Firstspark Inc?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Amazonsmile Foundation.
Where is Firstspark Inc based?
Firstspark Inc is based in VA.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 35 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Firstspark’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home