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Retail Advancement Fund at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Retail Advancement Fund

To support and expand the charitable activites of the retail merchants association.

$110k
Granted FY2024still arriving
8
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$21k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2024.

Food & Nutrition$216kHousing & Shelter$167kCommunity Improvement$59kReligion$25kHuman Services$23kArts & Culture$16kCrime & Legal$15kEnvironment$7k
02FY2024 · 8 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 8 grants below total $100,124, the rows itemized in this filing. The $109,903 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $9,779 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k2 grants · $11k
  • $10k–50k6 grants · $89k
$14,214
Median grant
1
States reached
$95k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
MS GIRLEE'S KITCHEN LLC$21,086
Individual grant recipient$18,570
BONOS CARRIBEAN CUISINE$15,423
Individual grant recipient$14,214
SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM$10,000
Individual grant recipient$10,000
KITCHEN ON WELLINGTON$5,746
SWEET TEMPTATIONS BY THERESE LLC$5,085
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY21–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 99% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%POMONA PLANTS: $7k → 7%FAVOUR COOKIE CO: $15k → 9%MANCHESTER GROOM SALOON LLC: $16k → 22%KITCHEN ON WELLINGTON: $8k → 9%LAFOX HAIR DESIGNS: $15k → 22%FAT RABBIT: $10k → 9%GREEN OLIVE EATERY: $14k → 22%KITCHEN ON WELLINGTON: $6k → 9%SOUL N VINEGAR: $10k → 9%CAROLINA BBQ: $43k → 9%OCEAN WORLD SEAFOOD MARKET: $17k → 9%BONOS CARRIBEAN CUISINE: $15k → 9%BONOS CARRIBEAN CUISINE: $8k → 9%SWEET TEMPTATIONS BY THERESE LLC: $5k → 9%SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM: $25k → 9%JADE SALON: $24k → 9%8 12 CHURCH HILL: $23k → 9%MS GIRLEE'S KITCHEN LLC: $21k → 9%SECOND BOTTLE WINE & SNACK SHOP: $20k → 9%GREAT WORK RVA: $19k → 9%GLEAN LLC: $19k → 9%GLEAN LLC: $16k → 9%BARESOUL YOGA: $15k → 9%URBAN SET BRIDE: $14k → 9%DOLCE PIZZA & GRILL: $14k → 9%JADE SALON: $11k → 9%TONYA'S KITCHEN: $10k → 9%SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM: $10k → 9%GLEAN LLC: $10k → 9%BARESOUL YOGA: $10k → 9%SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM: $9k → 9%SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM: $9k → 9%ITS WHEEL SIMPLE: $9k → 9%URBAN SET BRIDE: $9k → 9%EZ BODY & AUTO REPAIR SERVICE LLC: $8k → 9%WHEEL SIMPLE: $7k → 9%C ALEXANDER'S CLEANERS: $7k → 9%C ALEXANDER'S CLEANERS: $7k → 9%DEAR NEIGHBOR: $6k → 9%WALNUT ALLEY LLC: $6k → 9%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
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.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

47%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$248k · 9 repeat orgs$280k to everyone else

9 repeat relationships: 3 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

9
14

Total granted

$248k
$211k

Still filing today

0%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 31% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k went to new ones.

50%100%’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • SD
    SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM
    4× · 2021–2024 · $54k
  • GL
    GLEAN LLC
    3× · 2021–2023 · $45k
  • JC
    Jaida Cureton
    2× · 2021–2022 · $35k

Funded once

  • CB
    CAROLINA BBQ
    one grant, 2021 · $43k
  • 81
    8 12 CHURCH HILL
    one grant, 2023 · $23k
  • SB
    SECOND BOTTLE WINE & SNACK SHOP
    one grant, 2023 · $20k
How this is measured

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

04Its field
04the grantee network

0 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2021–2024.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2021 to 2024, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 0 of the 28 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
0/0
Grantees still filing
0/0
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

SPOTTY DOG ICE CREAM: $53,751 · OtherSPOTTY DOG ICE CREAMGLEAN LLC: $45,016 · OtherGLEAN LLCCAROLINA BBQ: $43,327 · OtherCAROLINA BBQJaida Cureton: $34,991 · OtherJaida CuretonBARESOUL YOGA: $25,018 · OtherURBAN SET BRIDE: $23,526 · OtherBONOS CARRIBEAN CUISINE: $22,923 · Other8 12 CHURCH HILL: $22,860 · OtherMS GIRLEE'S KITCHEN LLC: $21,086 · OtherSECOND BOTTLE WINE & SNACK SHOP: $19,934 · OtherIndividual grant recipient: $18,570 · Other+17 more: $197,203 · Other+17 more
Other$528,205

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%grantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Retail Advancement Fund?

Find your warmest path to Retail Advancement Fund 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 28 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $94k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2024, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Retail Advancement’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home