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Robert J Avila Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Robert J Avila 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.

$33k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$20k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
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 2025.

Education$35kFood & Nutrition$29kRecreation & Sports$2kArts & Culture$2kHealth$1kCommunity Improvement$1k
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k5 grants · $14k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
$3,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$89k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
St Mary of the Bay Food Pantry$19,700
Tyler Mendonca and Univ of RI$7,500
East Bay Food Pantry$3,000
Roger Williams University$1,000
Nathaniel Ramos Springfield College$1,000
Bridget Williams U of Massachusetts$1,000
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 (FY21–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 7%St Mary of the Bay Food Pantry: $20k → 7%Boystown: $817 → 7%Tyler Mendonca and Univ of RI: $8k → 7%Newport Mental Health: $1k → 7%Tyler Mendonca and Univ of RI: $8k → 7%Annee Kopecky-Stevenson University: $2k → 7%Town of Warren RI: $2k → 7%Warren Rotary Club: $1k → 7%Amanda Estrela - RI College: $1k → 7%Sarah Withers: $1k → 7%St Mary of the Bay Church: $1k → 7%Sarah Withers and Merrimack College: $1k → 7%Henry Scott and Lehigh University: $1k → 7%Mackenzie Boucher - Univ of RI: $1k → 7%Mackenzie Boucher-University of RI: $1k → 7%Nathaniel Ramos-Springfield College: $1k → 7%Nathaniel Ramos: $1k → 7%Sarah Withers-Merrimack College: $1k → 7%Sarah Withers - Merrimack College: $1k → 7%Mackenzie Boucher: $1k → 7%Nathaniel Ramos and Springfield Col: $1k → 7%East Bay Food Pantry: $3k → 7%East Bay Food Pantry: $3k → 7%East Bay Food Pantry: $2k → 7%Roger Williams University: $1k → 7%Roger Williams University: $1k → 7%Community String Project: $1k → 7%Community String PRoject: $1k → 7%Roger Williams University: $1k → 7%Roger Williams University: $1k → 7%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.

50%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$35k · 7 repeat orgs$35k to everyone else

7 repeat relationships: 4 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

7
13

Total granted

$35k
$15k

Still filing today

43%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 38% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k went to new ones.

50%100%’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

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

’21’22’23’24’25
Food & NutritionArts & CultureEducationOther
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

  • TM
    Tyler Mendonca and Univ of RI
    2× · 2024–2025 · $15k
  • EAST BAY FOOD PANTRY
    3× · 2021–2025 · $8k · revenue -3%
  • ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY
    4× · 2022–2025 · $4k · revenue +4%

Funded once

  • AK
    Annee Kopecky-Stevenson University
    one grant, 2022 · $2k
  • TO
    Town of Warren RI
    one grant, 2024 · $2k
  • NM
    Newport Mental Health
    one grant, 2022 · $1k
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

3 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 3 of the 22 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)
3/3
Grantees still filing
1/3
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

St Mary of the Bay Food Pantry: $19,700 · OtherSt Mary of the Bay Food PantryTyler Mendonca and Univ of RI: $15,000 · OtherTyler Mendonca and Univ of RIIndividual grant recipient: $2,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipient: $2,000 · OtherAnnee Kopecky-Stevenson University: $2,000 · OtherNathaniel Ramos Springfield College: $2,000 · Other+13 more: $13,517 · Other+13 moreEAST BAY FOOD PANTRY: $8,000 · Food & NutritionEAST BAY FOO…ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY: $4,000 · EducationCOMMUNITY STRING PROJECT INC: $2,000 · Arts & Culture
Other$56,217Food & Nutrition$8,000Education$4,000Arts & Culture$2,000

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

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetEAST BAY FOOD PANTRY: $8,000 over 3y, 0.2% of budgetROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY: $4,000 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetCOMMUNITY STRING PROJECT INC: $2,000 over 2y, 0.5% of 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.

  • Who funds EAST BAY FOOD PANTRY ↗
  • Who funds ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY ↗
  • Who funds COMMUNITY STRING PROJECT INC ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Robert J Avila Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Robert J Avila Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    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 22 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-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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    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