How much does The Barr Foundation give?

The Barr Foundation reported 103 grants totaling $139,569 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 75 and 101 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Barr Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (40%), Health (30%), Education (7%).

Who are The Barr Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: The Breast Cancer Research Foundation Inc ($227k), The Virginia Arts Festival Inc ($91k), The Chrysler Museum Incorporated ($36k).

Does The Barr Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 16% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Barr Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Barr Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Hampton Roads Community Foundation, Tidewater Jewish Foundation Inc, The Helen G Gifford Foundation.

Where is The Barr Foundation based?

The Barr Foundation is based in VA.

The Barr Foundation

The Barr Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Barr Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$140k

Granted FY2025still arriving

103

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$25k

Largest

01What it funds

0198% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$456kHealth$348kEducation$75kReligion$53kPhilanthropy$34kHuman Services$28kEnvironment$27kFood & Nutrition$21kOther$0

02FY2025 · 103 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k100 grants · $80k
$10k–50k3 grants · $60k

$500

Median grant

States reached

$4.2M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION	$25,000
VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL	$20,800
CHRYSLER MUSEUM	$14,050
BETH EL	$5,360
WHRO	$5,300
UKRAINIAN HUMANITY CENTER	$4,100
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM	$4,100
HOPEWELL FUNDGALVANIZE USA	$3,000
PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SE VIRGINIA	$2,700
VIRGINIA SYMPHONY	$2,500
PLANNED PARENTHOOD	$2,500
HORIZON HAMPTON ROADS	$2,000
CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY	$1,800
FOR KIDS	$1,775
Individual grant recipient	$1,750

02The need

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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 48% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.

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.

Which US states its grants reach

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.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 86% of The Barr Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 47% of the giving stays in VA; by stated purpose, 9%.

The Barr Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address

How this is measured

Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

96%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.1M · 126 repeat orgs$39k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +32% since the first grant, against 0% for those funded once.

126 repeat relationships: 81 still active in FY2025, 45 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

126

Total granted

$1.1M

$25k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+32%

Still filing today

49%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureInternationalCivil RightsEnvironmentHealthEducationOther

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

THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $227k · revenue +40%
TV
THE VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $91k · revenue +113%
TC
THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM INCORPORATED
9× · 2017–2025 · $36k · revenue +36%

Funded once

CB
CONGREGATION BETH EL
one grant, 2019 · $6k
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2022 · $3k
TI
TEMPLE ISRAEL OF HOLLYWOOD
one grant, 2020 · $2k

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

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

The Jewish Museum

The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.

Arts & Culture

United States Naval Institute

Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.

—

New York Genome Center Inc

Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.

Health

University of New Haven

The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…

Education

New York University

Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.

Education

President and Fellows of Harvard College

Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.

Education

University of Virginia Investment Management Company

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).

Education

The George Washington University

The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…

Education

Fordham University

Fordham university, the jesuit university of new york, is committed to the discovery of wisdom and the transmission of learning, through research and through education of the highest quality. for more information, see schedule o.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

Education

Lehigh University

The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…

Education

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Defense Fund; the most unlike its peers is Care for Me Youth Initiatives. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

95 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 95 of the 197 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

95/95

Grantees still filing

59/95

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$564,204Arts & Culture$237,498Public Safety & Disaster$226,500Education$40,825Philanthropy$37,010Environment$21,604Health$17,656

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

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.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Hampton Roads Community FoundationVA33.2× affinity14 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Hampton Roads Community Foundation · Tidewater Jewish Foundation Inc · The Helen G Gifford Foundation · United Way of South Hampton Roads · Sentara Health · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Townebank Foundation · Goode Family Foundation · Alan & Esther Fleder Foundation · Patricia and Douglas Perry Foundation DBA The Perry Family Foundation · Beazley Foundation Incorporated · Shearwater Foundation Inc

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

18report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

1rely on government for over half their income

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.

Play a game based on Barr’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