· Private foundation
Lafon Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $40k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WVU FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| HUNGRY LAMB FOOD INITIATIVE INC | $5,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| TERRA COTTA GOLF CHARITIES | $3,000 |
| BOONE COUNTY CHAPTER OF THE WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 82% 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 98% of Lafon Family 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, 87% of the giving stays in WV; read by stated purpose it is 64% — 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 +109% since the first grant, against +61% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- WVWEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $251k · revenue +5%
- HLHungry Lamb Food Initiative7× · 2017–2024 · $48k · revenue +109%
- HHHERO HOUSE2× · 2018–2020 · $6k · revenue +136%
Funded once
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSEone grant, 2021 · $10k
- AIARTIS-NAPLES INCone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -3%
- HMHELP MINISTRIES INCone grant, 2019 · $5k
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.
Our mission is to end addiction in Appalachia through events that support substance abuse prevention and recovery programs.
To offer recovery to alchoholics and drug addicts through a 12-step program and to provide a safe place for men to acquire sobriety.
The southern west virginia fellowship home is here to serve all in need of a better life apart from drugs and alcohol. we have a confident expectation that a whole new life "a better life" exists for all.
To bring sober living to the local community
Our mission is to provide a supportive and nurturing environment for women in recovery from substance use disorder as they rebuild their lives, cultivate healthy habits, and thrive in sobriety. Through personalized care plans, life skills…
To identify and monitor health professionals that suffer from impairments for the west virginia parmacist recovery network .
Wheeling Hospital, Inc. is a Catholic hospital that serves as a health ministry, providing compassionate care to people of all faiths in a loving, spiritual environment. God gives us the responsibility to carry out his mission of healing…
A faith-based, sober living house, for men who are serious about maintaining a life of sobriety from addictive substances.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Double H Hole in the Woods Ranch Inc and the most unlike its peers is Artis-Naples Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 21 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 WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Hungry Lamb Food Initiative ↗
- Who funds HERO HOUSE ↗
- Who funds ARTIS-NAPLES INC ↗
- Who funds DOUBLE H HOLE IN THE WOODS RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds TERRA COTTA GOLF CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds Boone County Chapter of the West Virginia University Alumni Asc ↗
- Who funds THE RECOVERY POINT OF HUNTINGTON 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Lafon Family 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 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Lafon Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Lafon Family Foundation Inc through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.