· Private foundation
Luck Companies Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Luck Companies Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to The Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year Luck Companies Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 79 organizations, $800k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k136 grants · $211k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $364k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $225k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INNERWILL | $100,000 |
| YMCA OF GREATER RICHMOND | $75,000 |
| ANNA JULIA COOPER EPISCOPAL SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| ALLIANCE FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY | $34,000 |
| STARTUP VIRGINIA | $30,000 |
| JAMES RIVER ASSOCIATION | $30,000 |
| VIRGINIA CENTER FOR INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES | $30,000 |
| OPERATION HEALING FORCES | $25,000 |
| LAAMISTAD INC | $25,000 |
| BOYS HOME OF VIRGINIA | $20,120 |
| YWCA OF GREATER ATLANTA | $20,000 |
| LORD FAIRFAX COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $15,000 |
| ELIZABETH RIVER PROJECT | $15,000 |
| ABWE INTERNATIONAL | $15,000 |
| VIRGINIA FOUNDATION FOR INDEPENDENT COLLEGES | $15,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–20, $117k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 98% 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 79% of Luck Companies Foundation’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, 98% of the giving stays in VA; read by stated purpose it is 40% — 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 +54% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
43 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2020, 4 since wound down; 95 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 24% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $160 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
- IINNERWILL3× · 2018–2022 · $300k · revenue +62%
- YMYoung Men's Christian Association of Greater Richmond (6769)2× · 2018–2020 · $161k · revenue +25%
- GGoochlandCares2× · 2018–2020 · $68k · revenue +96%
Funded once
- VCVIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY FOUNDATgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $101k · revenue +26%
- BSBOY SCOUTS OF AMERICAone grant, 2018 · $26k · revenue +16%
- LRLAUREL RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +14%
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 university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
To provide investment and investment management and related services to the rector and the board of visitors of virginia commonwealth university (vcu), and/or to the private and independent foundations and other entities affiliated with…
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…
Chamberrva is the trusted voice for modern business in the richmond virginia region. we are change agents, rallying to do the hard things that will create a more connected, prosperous, health and equitable community.
To provide administrative services to university of virginia (university) entities, university associated organizations, or other entities involved in activities which support the university. to engage in matters pertaining to real…
To provide excellence in the delivery of healthcare.
To deliver important healthcare services with exceptional quality and patient-centered care.
The mission of vt-arc is to extend the impact of the virginia tech research and innovation enterprise, delivering superior analytic and technology solutions to government and non-government customers.
The mission is to bring compassion to health care and to be good to those in need, especially those who are poor and dying. as a system of caregivers, we commit ourselves to help bring people and communities to health and wholeness.
The William & Mary Foundation advances the university's highest aspirations by securing private support, guiding a multi-asset investment portfolio, and offering strategic leadership. In this work, we propel the university toward national…
The mission of the edward via college of osteopathic medicine (vcom) is to prepare globally-minded, community-focused physicians to meet the needs of rural and medically underserved populations and promote research to improve human health.
The university of virginia law school foundation's primary purpose is to receive, manage and expend funds for the benefit of the university of virginia school of law.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Greater Richmond Chamber Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Vivoblu Water for All. 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 40 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
116 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. 116 of the 198 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INNERWILL ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Richmond (6769) ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY FOUNDAT ↗
- Who funds GoochlandCares ↗
- Who funds JAMES RIVER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ANNA JULIA COOPER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OPERATION HEALING FORCES INC ↗
- Who funds VMI Foundation ↗
- Who funds VA FOUNDATION FOR INDEPENDENT COLLEGES ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL REGION LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL OF CENTRAL AND COASTAL VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities ↗
- Who funds STARTUP VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LaAmistad Inc ↗
- Who funds ELIJAH HOUSE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds FREE CLINIC OF POWHATAN INC ↗
- Who funds GOOCHLAND EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds The Elizabeth River Project ↗
- Who funds LAUREL RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF KERSHAW COUNTY ↗
- Who funds GOOCHLAND COUNTY VOLUNTEER FIRE - RESCUE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CENTRAL VA INC ↗
- Who funds UNBOUNDRVA ↗
- Who funds GEORGE C MARSHALL INTERNATIONAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey Richmond High School Inc ↗
- Who funds Petty Family Foundation 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: The Community Foundation Inc · Herndon Foundation · Robins Foundation · The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Richard S Reynolds Foundation · Virginia Nonprofit Housing Coalition · The Pauley Family Foundation · Carmax Foundation · Williams Mullen Foundation · Wilbur Moreland Havens Charitable Foundation · Shelton H Short Jr Trust
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 Luck Companies Foundation 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.
- American Whitewater — 5% 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 Luck Companies Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Luck Companies Foundation 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.