· Private foundation
The Better Living Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k29 grants · $117k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $60,000 |
| BLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $15,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE | $10,000 |
| UNITED WAY | $10,000 |
| LOAVES & FISHES FOOD PANTRY INC | $10,000 |
| EMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK | $6,000 |
| CHARLOTTESVILLE FREE CLINIC | $6,000 |
| CAMP HOLIDAY TRAILS | $6,000 |
| MADISON HOUSE | $6,000 |
| FLUVANNA MEALS ON WHEELS | $6,000 |
| JEFFERSON AREA BOARD FOR AGING | $5,000 |
| PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| READYKIDS | $5,000 |
| BUILDING GOODNESS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $132k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 6%. 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.
41 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- BRBLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK INC6× · 2019–2024 · $80k · revenue +48%
- LFLOAVES & FISHES FOOD PANTRY INC6× · 2019–2024 · $35k · revenue +123%
- CFCHARLOTTESVILLE FREE CLINIC6× · 2019–2024 · $32k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- SSPCAone grant, 2022 · $3k
- KCKIWANIS CLUB OF CHARLOTTESVILLEone grant, 2019 · $3k
- DADISABLED AMERICAN VETERANSone grant, 2019 · $3k
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.
We improve health every day through coordinating, promoting and planning for the provision of health services and the promotion of health, medical education, and the social, cultural, educational, and economic development of the community.
See schedule o.as part of sentara health's integrated health care system, we improve health every day through the establishment and operation of programs and services for the provision of health care and for health related purposes; the…
As part of sentara health's integrated health care system, we improve health every day.
As part of sentara health's integrated health care system, we improve health every day.
As part of sentara health's integrated delivery system, we improve health every day.
Our mission is to put christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all. our focus is on youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. we help kids succeed, prepare teens…
As part of sentara health's integrated health care organization, we improve health everyday through the provision of health care facilities and services for sick, injured, disabled, indigent, and aged persons.
The mission of the edward via college of osteopathic medicine (vcom) is to prepare globally-minded, community-focused physicians to meet the needs of rural and medically underserved populations and promote research to improve human health.
As part of sentara health's integrated health care system, we improve health every day.
The mission of northern virginia family service (nvfs) is "to empower individuals and families to improve their quality of life, and to promote community cooperation and support in responding to family needs." nvfs was established in 1924…
Our mission transforming health and inspiring hope for all virginians and beyond. our vision to be the nation's leading public academic health system and a best place to work - while transforming patient care, research, education, and…
Family lifeline partners with families and individuals, delivering intensive home and community-based services to achieve an equitable, resilient community where families and individuals are connected, safe, and living a healthy,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Charlottesville Free Clinic and the most unlike its peers is Muscular Dystrophy Association Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 44 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 10% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 49 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 BLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds LOAVES & FISHES FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTESVILLE FREE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds FLUVANNA MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds SOHO CENTER FOR ARTS AND EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds READYKIDS INC ↗
- Who funds JEFFERSON AREA BOARD FOR AGING INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS AND BIG SISTERS OF THE CENTRAL BLUE RIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds PIEDMONT FAMILY YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP HOLIDAY TRAILS ↗
- Who funds Madison House ↗
- Who funds SHELTER FOR HELP IN EMERGENCY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTESVILLE-ALBEMARLE RESCUE SQUAD ↗
- Who funds INNISFREE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BUILDING GOODNESS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE AND CONGREGATIONS ENGAGED IN MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF THE PIEDMONT INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY VOLUNTEERS OF CHARLOTTESVILLE ALBEMARLE ↗
- Who funds PIEDMONT CASA INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA INSTITUTE OF AUTISM INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA DISCOVERY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION 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: Charlottesville Area Community Foundation · Manning Family Foundation · Perry Foundation Inc · Caplin Foundation · The Charles Fund Inc · The Genan Foundation · Whitney and Anne Stone Foundation · The Watterson Foundation · United Way of Greater Charlottesville · S&P Global Foundation Fka the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation · I J and Hilda M Breeden Foundation · The J & E Berkley 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 The Better Living 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.