· Private foundation
Shearwater Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $185k
- $250k+5 grants · $4.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE | $1,510,000 |
| NORFOLK STATE UNIVERSITY | $1,500,000 |
| ACCESS COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $735,000 |
| COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION | $525,000 |
| VMI FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| BUCKLEY COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF SOUTH HAMPTON ROADS | $25,000 |
| EASTERN VIRGINIA MEDICAL SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| TIDEWATER FRIENDS OF FOSTER CARE | $25,000 |
| NORFOLK ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF THE KING'S DAUGHTERS (CHKD) | $10,000 |
| ELIZABETH RIVER PROJECT | $10,000 |
| FOODBANK OF SOUTHEASTERN VA | $10,000 |
| THE UP CENTER | $10,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $80k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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.
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.
33 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M 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
- ACACCESS COLLEGE FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $3.3M · revenue +95% · 37% of their budget
- VHVIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY7× · 2017–2024 · $2.5M · revenue +103%
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation7× · 2017–2024 · $675k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- HHEALTHIER757one grant, 2020 · $10k
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).
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…
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…
The jefferson scholars foundation (foundation) provides academic merit-based scholarship, fellowship and professorship support to students and faculty at the university of virginia (uva).
To educate a diverse body of students to thrive in a college setting and beyond.
Since 1775, the mission of Hampden-Sydney College has been to form good men and good citizens in an atmosphere of sound learning.
Virginia tech foundation, inc. (vtf) is a virginia nonstock corporation established in 1948 for the sole purpose of managing virginia tech's endowment to advance virginia tech's mission and its strategic priorities.
Virginia wesleyan university is a fully accredited liberal arts, united-methodist related institution founded in 1961.
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…
To deliver important healthcare services with exceptional quality and patient-centered care.
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 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 Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters. 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 69 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 — 0.0% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 36 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 VMI Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE NORFOLK ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds ACCESS COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds United Way of South Hampton Roads ↗
- Who funds BUCKLEY COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF FOSTER CARE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Eastern Virginia Medical School Foundation ↗
- Who funds JAMESTOWN-YORKTOWN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Elizabeth River Project ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters ↗
- Who funds FOODBANK OF SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA STAGE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES OF EASTERN VA INC D/B/A THE UP CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE UNION MISSION ↗
- Who funds THE MARINERS' MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NORFOLK BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds SLOVER LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Agnes Scott College ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds AMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds BOOMER ESIASON FOUNDATION ↗
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: Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Patricia and Douglas Perry Foundation DBA The Perry Family Foundation · Tidewater Jewish Foundation Inc · Townebank Foundation · Hampton Roads Community Foundation · The Richard S Glasser Family Foundation · The Blocker Foundation · Brown Advisory Charitable Foundation Inc · The Landmark Foundation · Suffolk Foundation · Beazley Foundation Incorporated · The Windward 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 Shearwater Foundation Inc 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.
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Amherst College Trustees — 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 Shearwater Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Shearwater Foundation Inc 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.