How much does The Elmo Foundation give?

The Elmo Foundation reported 51 grants totaling $663,500 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 29 and 58 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Elmo Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Environment (24%), Health (19%), Housing & Shelter (14%).

Who are The Elmo Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Charlottesville Free Clinic ($250k), Virginia Organizing Inc ($213k), Piedmont Casa Inc ($170k).

Does The Elmo Foundation fund new organizations?

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

Does The Elmo 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.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Elmo Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The Oak Hill Fund, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, United States Energy Foundation.

Where is The Elmo Foundation based?

The Elmo Foundation is based in VA.

The Elmo Foundation

The Elmo Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Elmo 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.

$664k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$50k

Largest

01What it funds

0199% classified

What it funded, over time

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

Environment$1.4MHealth$1.1MHousing & Shelter$801kCrime & Legal$549kEducation$497kInternational$306kHuman Services$234kCivil Rights$213kOther$0

02FY2025 · 51 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k16 grants · $87k
$10k–50k34 grants · $527k
$50k–250k1 grant · $50k

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$14M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
CHARLOTTESVILLE HABITAT FOR HUMANIT	$50,000
CHARLOTTESVILLE HIGH SCHOOL	$45,000
CHESPEAKE CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK	$40,000
VIRGINIA ORGANIZING	$25,000
CHARLOTTESVILLE FREE CLINIC	$25,000
ECOADDENDUM	$22,000
EVERGREEN COLLABORATIVE	$20,000
CLEAN WISCONSIN	$20,000
STRONGMINDS INC	$20,000
COMMUNITY CLIMATE COLLABORATIVE	$16,000
WARD 8 WOODS CONSERVANCY INC	$15,000
PBS	$15,000
ANAI INC	$15,000
BUILD CHANGE	$15,000
MICHIGAN CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK	$15,000

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 (FY20–25, $46k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.

Where the work is directed

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

About 10% of The Elmo Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address.

The Elmo Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 11% directed abroad (not shown)

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.

93%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$5.2M · 82 repeat orgs$383k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +42% since the first grant, against 0% for those funded once.

82 repeat relationships: 38 still active in FY2025, 44 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$5.2M

$286k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+42%

Still filing today

65%

51%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $97k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentHealthInternationalCrime & LegalPublic BenefitHuman ServicesOther

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

CF
CHARLOTTESVILLE FREE CLINIC
7× · 2017–2025 · $250k · revenue +5%
PC
PIEDMONT CASA INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $170k · revenue +114%
SI
STRONGMINDS INC
8× · 2017–2025 · $160k · revenue +375%

Funded once

PN
POSSIBLE NYAYA HEALTH
one grant, 2021 · $25k
CM
CENTRAL MEXICO YOUTH FUND
one grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue -2%
MC
MICHIGAN CLINICIANS FOR CLIMATE ACT
one grant, 2021 · $20k

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.

Climate Catalyst Inc

Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.

Environment

CarbonPlan

Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.

Environment

Climate Foundation

To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.

Science & Tech

Partnership for Policy Integrity

Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.

Environment

E3G Third Generation Environmentalism

E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.

Environment

Climate Breakthrough Inc

To launch breakthrough climate mitigation efforts by identifying, supporting, and unleashing innovative leaders with transformative strategies.

Human Services

Climate Rights International

CRI is an international climate and human rights monitoring and advocacy organization dedicated to preventing climate change and human rights abuses.

Environment

Nature for Justice

To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.

Environment

Environmental Investigation Agency

To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.

International

Environment Next Inc

Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…

Environment

Coalition for Green Capital D/B/a American Green Bank Consortium

Cgc operates as a nonprofit financial institution that invests directly and through partners to transform financial markets by using public and private investing to accelerate the deployment of projects that strengthen the grid, reduce…

Environment

Cascade Climate Inc

To accelerate progress in interventions that harness Earths natural systems to stabilize the climate.

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Goodpower Education Fund Inc; the most unlike its peers is Inga Foundation. 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

85 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. 85 of the 132 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)

84/85

Grantees still filing

53/85

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$3,283,521Environment$860,000Health$665,000International$311,000Community Improvement$213,500Crime & Legal$213,500Social Science$140,000

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.

The Oak Hill FundVA36.1× affinity15 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Oak Hill Fund · Charlottesville Area Community Foundation · United States Energy Foundation · Patagoniaorg · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Paul Bechtner Foundation · The J & E Berkley Foundation · Greater Washington Community Foundation · Westwind Foundation · The Energy Foundation · The Partnership Project Inc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors 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 Elmo Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Elmo Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

11get no government money at all

26report 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 Elmo’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