· Private foundation
Lavelle Fund for the Blind Inc
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $517k
- $50k–250k35 grants · $4.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND | $486,137 |
| KINGS BAY YM-YWHA | $350,000 |
| HELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL | $250,000 |
| HELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL | $242,788 |
| LIGHTHOUSE GUILD INTERNATIONAL | $209,902 |
| BENETECH | $204,578 |
| SUNY COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY FOUNDATION (FORMERLY KNOWN AS OPTOMETRIC CENTER O | $198,319 |
| DR SHROFF'S CHARITY EYE HOSPITAL | $175,000 |
| VISIONSSERVICES FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED | $175,000 |
| RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK HUNTER COLLEGE | $168,699 |
| FUNDACION GUATEMALTECA PARA NINOS CON SORDOCEGUERA ALEX (FUNDAL) | $150,000 |
| LAVELLE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND | $150,000 |
| SEVA FOUNDATION | $146,410 |
| CENTER FOR INDEPENDENCE OF THE DISABLED NEW YORK | $143,276 |
| THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY | $134,412 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–25, $6.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 72% of those 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 10% of Lavelle Fund for the Blind 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, 57% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 49% — 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 +30% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
67 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 11 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $928k 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
- PSPERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND6× · 2020–2025 · $3.2M · revenue +33%
- HKHELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL6× · 2020–2025 · $2.7M · revenue +47%
- APAMERICAN PRINTING HOUSE FOR THE BLIND INC4× · 2020–2023 · $601k · revenue +74%
Funded once
- TATHE ASSOCIATION FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIREDone grant, 2020 · $239k
- HIHADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIREDone grant, 2021 · $225k · revenue -9%
- AFASSOCIATION FOR THE MULTIPLE IMPAIRED BLIND INCone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue +23%
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.
Provide innovative training and tools for people who are blind or visually impaired to help them achieve their goals and dreams
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
None
To positively transform the lives of those with vision loss. (See Schedule O)
Keralink international works to end avoidable blindness by developing, delivering, and scaling affordable solutions for all, powered by innovative technology and partnerships.
To enhance the opportunities for the economic and personal independence of people who are blind, primarily through creating, sustaining, and improving employment.
Bestwork industries for the blind, inc. is a non-profit organization that provides opportunities for training and productive employment for many people who are blind and visually impaired. bestwork industries works closely with the…
In-sight inspires confidence and builds skills that help people who are visually impaired and blind to thrive and succeed.
To improve occupational opportunity and public perception of legally blind arkansans through community engagement, work skills enhancement and the production of quality goods and services.
To improve the quality of life and provide inspiration and opportunity for people who are blind and visually impaired through employment, outreach, rehabilitation, education and research.
Our mission is to improve quality of life by transforming the understanding, treatment, and care of the ocular surface.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lighthouse Guild International Inc and the most unlike its peers is Success Beyond Sight Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 54 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
85 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. 85 of the 123 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 PERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds HELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds VISIONSSERVICES FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds BENEFICENT TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds SEVA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRINTING HOUSE FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds KINGS BAY YM-YWHA INC ↗
- Who funds VISIONSERVE ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds The New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations ↗
- Who funds Helen Keller Services ↗
- Who funds VISION FORWARD ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CITY ACCESS NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN ASSOCIATION OF THE BLIND AT ALBANY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ARAVIND INC DBA ARAVIND EYE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN BLIND MISSION INTERNAT'L INC ↗
- Who funds Fordham University ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE GUILD INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Learning Ally Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CARROLL CENTER FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds Cancer Care Inc ↗
- Who funds Freedom Guide Dogs for the Blind Inc ↗
- Who funds THE FILOMEN M DAGOSTINO GREENBERG MUSIC SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL VISION ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds SAFE TODDLES ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN BRAILLE WORKERS INC ↗
- Who funds VISIONSPRING INC ↗
- Who funds ST JOHN'S UNIVERSITY NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds SETON HALL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE FRED HOLLOWS FOUNDATION ↗
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: Reader's Digest Partners for Sight Foundation · The Gibney Family Foundation Inc · Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Inc · Sarah Decoizart Perpetual Charitable Tr · Allene Reuss Memorial Trust · National Industries for the Blind · The New York Community Trust · Delta Gamma Foundation · William G and Helen C Hoffman Fdn · Consumer Technology Association Foundation · The Barker Welfare Foundation · Altman 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 Lavelle Fund for the Blind 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.
- Perkins School for the Blind — 7% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Carroll Center for the Blind Inc — 3% of income from government
- The National Federation of the Blind — 2% of income from government
- Fairfield University — 1% of income from government
- Seton Hall University — 1% of income from government
- National Braille Press Inc — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Lavelle Fund for the Blind Inc?
Find your warmest path to Lavelle Fund for the Blind 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.