· Private foundation
Nora Roberts Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k369 grants · $1.7M
- $10k–50k67 grants · $983k
- $50k–250k22 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+8 grants · $3.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PROLITERACY WORLDWIDE | $750,000 |
| BUTTONWOOD INSTITUTE | $500,000 |
| HOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| LUMINIS HEALTH DOCTOR'S COMMUNITY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $303,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF WASHINGTON COUNTY | $250,000 |
| SAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME | $250,000 |
| MOVEIUS CONTEMPORARY BALLET INC | $250,000 |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $250,000 |
| FRIENDS OF NCTC ALL OVER THE MAP | $200,000 |
| HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| AMICA CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS | $200,000 |
| LUMINIS HEALTH DOCTORS COMMUNITY | $100,000 |
| PROLITERACY | $100,000 |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $100,000 |
| SMITHSBURG HIGH SCHOOL | $100,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 58% 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.
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 +21% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
774 repeat relationships — 359 still active in FY2025, 415 since wound down; 81 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $712k 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
- PWPROLITERACY WORLDWIDE6× · 2020–2025 · $1.4M · revenue +19%
- HCHOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +118%
- SMSAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME INC5× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +24%
Funded once
- PLPRO LITERACY WORLDWIDE FOR GRANTS PROGRAMone grant, 2022 · $750k
- GGBMCone grant, 2023 · $750k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $281k
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.
Imagination stage of washington, dc, inc. empowers all young people to discover their voice and identity through performing arts education and professional theatre.
To create and advance high quality, diverse educational communities that teach children the foundations of life-long learning and social responsibility.
The mission of breakthrough montessori public charter school is to provide families in washington, dc with a fully implemented, public montessori program that enables children to develop within themselves the power to shape their lives and…
The mission of the washington literacy center is to raise the literacy level of adults in washington, dc such that they may function on the job, in the family and in society. program offerings have expanded to include digital, woprkplace,…
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,…
Read alliance, inc (read alliance) works to accelerate the educational trajectory of early elementary students through the power of teens who provide one-to-one literacy tutoring in under-resourced communities. read impacts two populations…
Our mission is to dramatically improve the early career outcomes of dc youth and young adults of color by creating innovative programs and by mobilizing employers, educators, and city leaders to create a local, diverse talent pipeline. our…
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…
Cultivating inclusive communities through relationships, innovation and high-quality services.
Reading results partners with schools to support students from systemically excluded communities in becoming successful readers. we believe that literacy is a basic human right, and we work to increase access and break down barriers…
To nurture and inspire passion for the arts and learning in talented students who might not otherwise have an opportunity to develop their artistic skills; to ensure that our students are prepared for post-secondary education and/or…
The mission of Writers in the Schools (WITS) is to connect children and youth with professional writers and spoken word artists to unlock the joy and power of storytelling and creative expression.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Meeting Street and the most unlike its peers is Learning 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 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.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
1077 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 1077 of the 1,674 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SHEPHERD UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROLITERACY WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds HOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Moveius Contemporary Ballet Inc dba Dance Loft on 14 ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF WASHINGTON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LUMINIS HEALTH DOCTORS COMMUNITY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTLY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds IMAGINATION STAGE INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS COALITION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds THE AUTHORS GUILD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION OF FREDERICK COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds ARC OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds THEATREWASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds MPT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARYLAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds RIVENDELL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENT DE PAUL OF BALTIMORE INC ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OF THE USA INC ↗
- Who funds Douglas G Bast Museum Of History and Preservation 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 Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · Dimick Foundation John M Lynham Jr Trustee · Philip L Graham Fund co Graham Holdings Company · John Edward Fowler Memorial Foundation · Delaplaine Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Washington County Maryland Inc · United Way of the National Capital Area · Venable Foundation Inc · The John J Leidy Foundation Inc · Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Inc · Greater Washington Community 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 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.
- World Arts Focus — 100% of income from government
- Bethesda Cares Inc — 100% of income from government
- Meritus Health Foundation Inc — 94% of income from government
- Maryland Humanities Council Inc — 60% of income from government
- Diakonia Inc — 51% of income from government
- Parks and People Inc — 43% of income from government
- St Vincent De Paul of Baltimore Inc — 40% of income from government
- Project Plase Inc — 39% of income from government
- Casa - Citizens Assisting and Sheltering the Abused Inc — 35% of income from government
- Heartly House Inc — 33% of income from government
- The Baltimore Children's Museum Inc — 33% of income from government
- Potomac Playmakers Inc — 31% of income from government
- San Mar Children's Home Inc — 29% of income from government
- The Frederick Arts Council Inc — 24% of income from government
- The House of Ruth Maryland Inc — 19% of income from government
- National Association of Black Storytellers Inc — 18% of income from government
- Barton Hose Company No 1 Inc — 18% of income from government
- Prince George's Child Resource Centerinc — 17% of income from government
- United Communities Against Poverty Inc — 17% of income from government
- Chesapeake Shakespeare Company — 16% of income from government
- Community Clinic Inc — 16% of income from government
- Flying V Ltd — 14% of income from government
- Imagination Stage Inc — 13% of income from government
- The Baltimore Station Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% of income from government
- Associated Catholic Charities Inc — 10% of income from government
- The Strathmore Hall Foundation Inc — 7% of income from government
- Center Stage Associates Inc — 7% of income from government
- Maryland Ensemble Theatre Inc — 5% of income from government
- Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts Inc — 5% of income from government
- Round House Theatre Inc — 5% of income from government
- Everymind Inc — 4% of income from government
- Community Crisis Services Inc — 4% of income from government
- Cornerstone Montgomery — 3% of income from government
- Dancemakers Inc — 2% of income from government
- Washington County Museum of Fine Arts — 2% of income from government
- Frederick Health Hospital Inc — 2% of income from government
- Marian House Inc — 2% of income from government
- Adventure Theatre Inc — 2% of income from government
- Habitat for Humanity of Wicomico County Inc — 1% of income from government
- Sinai Hospital of Baltimore Inc — 0% of income from government
- Olney Theatre Corporation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital Inc — 0% of income from government
- Harbor Hospital Inc — 0% of income from government
- Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Johns Hopkins Hospital — 0% of income from government
- National Braille Press Inc — 0% of income from government
- Howard County General Hospital Inc — 0% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- Mt Washington Pediatric Hospital 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 Nora Roberts Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Nora Roberts 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.