How much did NORA ROBERTS FOUNDATION grant in FY2024?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 65% of NORA ROBERTS FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2020

habitat humamityemergencystreetdiscoverummsindustriestech

2021

beginingswilliam marypeoplesvenus theatresamaritiansalisburyjohnson

2022

medstar healthlifebridge healthlinusrise augustapeacebranchadventist healthcare

2023

ephratakids readchoral artsteachersachievewritinglancaster

2024

hatterasdeepwildlifevillagefahrney keedyproliteracy worldwidelions

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 562 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k480 grants · $2.1M
$10k–50k57 grants · $789k
$50k–250k20 grants · $1.7M
$250k+5 grants · $2.5M

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$127M

Total assets

Largest grants

SAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME$750,000
PRO LITERACY$750,000
HOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION$500,000
BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WASHINGTON COU$250,000
MOVEIUS CONTEMPORARY BALLET INC$250,000
FRIENDS OF NCTC (ALL OVER THE MAP)$200,000
WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS$200,000
HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY$200,000
FRIENDS OF NCTC (ALL OVER THE MAP)$161,000
WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS$100,000
LUMINIS HEALTH DOCTOR'S COMMUNITY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION$100,000
PROLITERACY WORLDWIDE$100,000
PROLITERACY WORLDWIDE$50,000
THE ARC OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INC$50,000
HUMANE RESCUE ALLIANCE$50,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10% — the area typically sits at 10%. 51% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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; 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

73%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$27M · 762 repeat orgs$9.8M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +41% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.

762 repeat relationships — 391 still active in FY2024, 371 since wound down; 153 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

762

939

Total granted

$27M

$8.7M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+41%

Still filing today

60%

41%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EducationArts & CultureHuman ServicesHealthYouth DevelopmentHousing & ShelterOther

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

SM
SAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME
4× · 2020–2024 · $816k · revenue +54%
MC
MOVEIUS CONTEMPORARY BALLET INC
5× · 2020–2024 · $766k · revenue +231% · 27% of their budget
HC
HOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION
4× · 2020–2024 · $641k · revenue +15%

Funded once

G
GBMC
one grant, 2023 · $750k
PL
PRO LITERACY WORLDWIDE FOR GRANTS PROGRAM
one grant, 2022 · $750k
RI
RENFREW INSTITUTE
one grant, 2022 · $500k

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

04Your field

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.

Oakland Literacy Coalition Inc

Working together to ensure that every Oakland child learns and loves to read.

Education

Children's Literacy Center Inc

Building a life of success through a foundation of literacy...ONE child at a time.

Education

Between the Pages

Between the pages empowers children to discover a life-long love of reading using books as tools to immerse economically disadvantaged and avid readers in an engaging recreation of their favorite books, fostering literacy, creative play,…

Youth Development

Literary Cleveland

Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.

Education

Raising a Reader

Raising a Reader supports families and inspires the development of literacy skills and a lifelong love for reading. We help children attain brighter futures in which they can thrive and contribute in school, the workforce and society.

Education

District of Columbia Arts Center

The District of Columbia Arts Center serves the Washington DC area by presenting high caliber and challenging works. It encourages professionalism among artists by providing a forum for educational and cultural exchange. DCAC was founded…

Arts & Culture

Read to Them Inc

We use the power of reading aloud together to build connections across families, schools, and communities to cultivate students learning and success.

Education

Reading Partners

The organization partners with schools to provide one-on-one literacy tutoring.

Education

Commonlit Inc

To make high-quality literacy materials accessible to teachers and the general public for the advancement of education.

Education

Seattle Arts and Lectures

Seattle arts and lectures cultivates transformative experiences through story and language with readers and writers of all generations.

Arts & Culture

Literacy Network of South Berkshire Inc

To transform the lives of adult learners through the power of literacy education and advocacy

Education

Literacy Volunteers of Washington County

Volunteer Literacy Services to Adults.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Literacy Partners Inc and the most unlike its peers is Johns Hopkins Bayview. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 28 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.4% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.4%4/1,026

the rest of the field

11%

206,160/1,818,539

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.

05the grantee network

956 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2026.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

350

Early backer (in before they grew)

920/956

Grantees still filing

714/956

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$24,278,124Arts & Culture$4,005,600Education$2,661,306Health$2,379,400Human Services$1,932,004Youth Development$799,050Food & Nutrition$374,350

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.

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.

The Morris and Gwendolyn CafritzDC100.7× affinity99 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz · Dimick Foundation · John Edward Fowler Memorial Foundation · Venable Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation Of · Delaplaine Foundation Inc · Greater Washington Community Foundation · United Way of the National Capital Area · Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Inc · William S Abell Foundation Inc · Dollar General Literacy Foundation · Ausherman Family 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 organisation NORA ROBERTS 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

46get no government money at all

3rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: DOUGLAS G BAST MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND PRESERVATION INC.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

low risk

~14 months of operating runway; revenue contracted over 3 filed years.

Track record & reputation

medium risk

3 years of Form 990 filings, still active.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 823360736 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on DOUGLAS G BAST MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND PRESERVATION INC, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 14 months of cash on hand.
WatchSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue contracted over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 62% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to Nora Roberts Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Nora Roberts Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

More from the funding graph

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

Strange bedfellows

the named clusters of US funding

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines