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Firstspark Inc at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· 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 FY2025still arriving
11
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$725k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
0199% 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
02FY2025 · 11 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $50k–250k6 grants · $965k
  • $250k+5 grants · $2.2M
$234,907
Median grant
1
States reached
$1.0M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
PEAKE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER$725,269
PRECIOUS JEWELS LLC$640,690
ARMS OF THE KING$315,767
TICK TOCK AROUND THE CLOCK LLC$293,759
GRAND KIDS CHILD CARE CENTER$251,752
WARWICK KIDS ACADEMY OPERATED BY DEE CARE LLC$234,907
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH DENBIGH CHILD$193,315
HORIZONS UNLIMITED EARLY LEARNING CENTER$187,786
RF WILKINSON YMCA PRESCHOOL$183,365
YMCA - HUNNICUT$107,890
AMAZING CHILD CARE AND LEARNING ACADEMY$58,016
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY23–25, $2.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%PEAKE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER: $725k → 14%PEAKE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER: $591k → 14%PEAKE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER: $404k → 14%RF WILKINSON YMCA PRESCHOOL: $204k → 17%FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH DENBIGH CHILD: $193k → 17%RF WILKINSON YMCA PRESCHOOL: $183k → 17%YMCA - HUNNICUT: $150k → 17%RF WILKINSON YMCA PRESCHOOL: $130k → 17%YMCA - HUNNICUT: $126k → 17%YMCA - HUNNICUT: $108k → 17%YMCA - WILEY: $47k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

94%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$9.3M · 20 repeat orgs$586k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +19% since the first grant, against +4% for those funded once.

20 repeat relationships: 9 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

20
14

Total granted

$9.3M
$392k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+19%
+4%

Still filing today

15%
7%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $193k went to new ones.

50%100%’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

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

’21’22’23’24’25
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.

Backed again, and grew

  • DH
    DOWNTOWN HAMPTON CHILD CARE COUNCIL INC
    4× · 2022–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +79%
  • YM
    YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE VIRGINIA PENINSULAS
    3× · 2023–2025 · $949k · revenue +14%
  • HR
    HAMPTON ROADS INTERNATIONAL MONTESSORI S
    3× · 2022–2024 · $671k · revenue +19%

Funded once

  • AD
    ASHTON DAY CARE
    one grant, 2024 · $160k
  • HR
    HAMPTON ROADS COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM INC
    one grant, 2023 · $95k · revenue +4%
  • LL
    LITTLE LIGHT HOUSE CARE LLC - NN
    one grant, 2022 · $17k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

5 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 5 of the 35 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/5
Grantees still filing
4/5
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

PRECIOUS JEWELS LLC: $1,063,648 · OtherPRECIOUS JEWELS LLCGRAND KIDS CHILD CARE CENTER: $779,066 · OtherGRAND KIDS CHILD CARE CENTERARMS OF THE KING: $678,893 · OtherARMS OF THE KINGHAMPTON ROADS INTERNATIONAL MONTESSORI S: $670,518 · OtherHAMPTON ROADS INTERNATIONAL MONTESSORI STICK TOCK AROUND THE CLOCK LLC: $655,851 · OtherTICK TOCK AROUND THE CLOCK LLCHORIZONS UNLIMITED EARLY LEARNING CENTER: $501,162 · OtherHORIZONS UNLIMITED EARLY LEARNING CENTERWARWICK KIDS ACADEMY OPERATED BY DEE CARE LLC: $498,692 · OtherWARWICK KIDS ACADEMY OPERATED BY DEE CARE LLCCITY OF NEWPORT NEWS PARKS & RECREATION: $429,528 · OtherCITY OF NEWPORT NEWS PARKS & RECREATIONCHILDREN OF VALOUR: $279,829 · OtherTOTS AROUND THE CLOCK LLC: $245,567 · Other+21 more: $1,098,908 · Other+21 moreDOWNTOWN HAMPTON CHILD CARE COUNCIL INC: $1,719,791 · Human ServicesDOWNTOWN HAMPTON CHILD CARE COUN…YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE VIRGINIA PENINSULAS: $949,018 · Human ServicesYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIO…FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH DENBIGH CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER AND ACADEMY: $193,315 · Human ServicesFIRST BAPTIST CHURCH DENBIGH CHI…HAMPTON ROADS COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM INC: $95,353 · Community Improvement
Other$6,901,662Human Services$2,862,124Community Improvement$95,353

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetDOWNTOWN HAMPTON CHILD CARE COUNCIL INC: $1,719,791 over 4y, 23% of budgetYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE VIRGINIA PENINSULAS: $949,018 over 3y, 1.3% of budgetHAMPTON ROADS INTERNATIONAL MONTESSORI S: $670,518 over 3y, 14% of budgetHAMPTON ROADS COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM INC: $95,353 over 1y, 0.5% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds DOWNTOWN HAMPTON CHILD CARE COUNCIL INC ↗
  • Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE VIRGINIA PENINSULAS ↗
  • Who funds HAMPTON ROADS INTERNATIONAL MONTESSORI S ↗
  • Who funds FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH DENBIGH CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER AND ACADEMY ↗
  • Who funds HAMPTON ROADS COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM INC ↗

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.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Firstspark Inc funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Firstspark Inc. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%2%6%14%25%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    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