How much does The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation give?

The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation reported 38 grants totaling $614,500 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 41 and 51 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are International (20%), Food & Nutrition (16%), Education (16%).

Who are The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Americares Foundation Inc ($690k), Sustainable Harvest International ($410k), West Virginia University Foundation Inc ($171k).

Does The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 12% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Where is The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation based?

The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation is based in VA.

The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation

The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Betty and Wes Foster Family 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.

$615k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$150k

Largest

01What it funds

0194% classified

What it funded, over time

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

International$1.0MFood & Nutrition$854kEducation$845kEnvironment$358kHousing & Shelter$245kArts & Culture$197kCommunity Improvement$192kCivil Rights$187kOther$0

02FY2025 · 38 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k24 grants · $60k
$10k–50k9 grants · $160k
$50k–250k5 grants · $395k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$4.8M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Individual grant recipient	$150,000
AMERICARES	$75,000
1 UPHANDLES INC	$60,000
BLACKWATER BICYCLE ASSOCIATION	$60,000
BISHOP WALKER SCHOOL	$50,000
CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK	$30,000
SUSTAINABLE HARVEST INTERNATIONAL	$30,000
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS	$25,000
SAVE THE SOUND	$20,000
CANCER VACCINE COALITION	$15,000
SALVATION ARMY	$10,000
MANNA FOOD BANK	$10,000
ERIN PETERSON FUND	$10,000
MARTHA'S TABLE	$10,000
FEEDING AMERICA	$8,500

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, $142k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 77% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

82%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$4.2M · 74 repeat orgs$920k to everyone else

74 repeat relationships: 34 still active in FY2025, 40 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$4.2M

$784k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+41%

+65%

Still filing today

72%

61%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $136k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentArts & CultureEducationInternationalHuman ServicesHealthOther

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

SH
Sustainable Harvest International
9× · 2017–2025 · $410k · revenue +20%
MANNA FOOD BANK INC
4× · 2019–2025 · $162k · revenue +204%
CA
CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK INC
7× · 2019–2025 · $145k · revenue +76%

Funded once

WV
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC
one grant, 2021 · $171k · revenue -17%
SA
SALVATION ARMY - DISASTER RELIEF
one grant, 2024 · $50k
CC
CHRIST CHURCH
one grant, 2021 · $50k

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.

Actionaid Usa

Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…

Social Science

Open Markets Institute

The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.

Education

Conservation International Foundation

Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.

Environment

Friends of the Earth

Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…

Environment

Project Drawdown

Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…

Education

Washington Office On Latin America

To advance human rights and social justice in the americas.

International

The Union of Concerned Scientists Inc

The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.

International

Waterorg

Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.

International

Asociacion Interamericana Para La Defensa Del Ambiente

To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.

Crime & Legal

Partners in Food Solutions

Improve the food value chain in developing countries by mobilizing corporate volunteers to share knowledge and expertise with small and growing food processors.

International

Observer Research Foundation America

Organization mission the observer research foundation america orf america is an independent, non-partisan, and nonprofit organization in washington dc dedicated to addressing policy challenges facing the united states, india, and their…

International

Third Way

To research and develop centrist policy ideas.

Civil Rights

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Hospital Foundation; the most unlike its peers is NORTH10 Philadelphia. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

98 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. 98 of the 142 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)

96/98

Grantees still filing

73/98

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$2,324,925International$964,725Environment$690,450Education$419,162Food & Nutrition$413,200Human Services$185,300Arts & Culture$179,900

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.

Greater Washington Community FoundationDC23.6× affinity11 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Greater Washington Community Foundation · Philip L Graham Fund co Graham Holdings Company · The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia Inc · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Nora Roberts Foundation · Joseph E & Marjorie B Jones Foundation Corporation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · Impactassetsinc · The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina Inc · The Philadelphia Foundation · Gannett 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 Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Betty and Wes Foster Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

13get no government money at all

21report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely 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 Betty and Wes Foster Family’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