· Private foundation
The Helen G Gifford 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k25 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $88k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED JEWISH FEDERATION OF TIDEWATER | $37,500 |
| VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL | $20,000 |
| VIRGINIA OPERA ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM INC | $10,000 |
| VIRGINIA SYMPHONY | $10,000 |
| FORKIDS INC | $9,000 |
| FRIENDS OF CHEVRA THELIM | $7,500 |
| NORFOLK BOTANICAL GARDEN INC | $7,500 |
| HOPE HOUSE FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| FOODBANK OF SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA | $5,000 |
| YOUNG AUDIENCES OF VIRGINIA INC | $5,000 |
| THE HURRAH PLAYERS INC | $5,000 |
| RICHMOND BALLET | $5,000 |
| GOVERNORS MAGNET SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| VIRGINIA MUSICAL THEATRE INC | $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 (FY17–25, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 77% 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.
36 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- TVTHE VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL INC9× · 2017–2025 · $180k · revenue +113%
- VSVIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA9× · 2017–2025 · $173k · revenue +18%
- TCTHE CHRYSLER MUSEUM INCORPORATED9× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- TITHE INHEIRITANCE PROJECT LTDgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +86%
- VWVIRGINIA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue +68%
- TCTIDEWATER COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +67%
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 richmond symphony performs, teaches and champions music to inspire and unite our communities.
The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra provides a professional symphony orchestra of artistic excellence and integrity to enrich lives, to educate, and to entertain diverse audiences in western Virginia with the highest quality instrumental and…
Vcca's mission is to provide time and space for national and international writers, visual artists, and composers of talent and promise to bring forth their finest works, because the arts are vital, diversity is a strength, and creativity…
to support the performance and understanding of the vocal art song repertoire through presenting a season of vocal recitals, commissioning new repertoire and performances in schools and other local venues.
To inspire at-risk children to think creatively, courageously and critically about their life goals and choices by providing free theater arts and creative writing programs, in conjunction with in-depth mentoring, throughout their growing…
We produce vital works of classical and contemporary theatre, with Shakespeare as our foundation. We approach this work boldly with a resolve to ignite spirits, educate minds and defy expectation.
Opera production, appreciation and outreach
Provide professional training to young musicians.
Choral Performances in the Tidewater Area
To present the highest-quality performances of great music, bringing national and international distinction to the orchestra and its community; to delight and educate audiences of all ages and backgrounds, and enhance the cultural vitality…
Virginia repertory theatre is a nonprofit professional theater based in richmond, virginia. virginia rep's mission is to entertain, challenge, and uplift our communities through the power of live theatre.
To produce high quality opera and musicals at affordable prices; to provide training opportunities and experience for young artists and interns; to provide educational nourishment for all sectors of the community; and to enrich the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Virginia Stage Company and the most unlike its peers is Plaza Vol Fire Co & Rescue Squad. 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 45 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% 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 18% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 45 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 THE VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA OPERA ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds FORKIDS INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA STAGE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CHEVRA T'HELIM ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUDIENCES OF VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds NORFOLK BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE HURRAH PLAYERS INC ↗
- Who funds SANDLER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOODBANK OF SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH FEDERATION OF TIDEWATER ↗
- Who funds THE RICHMOND BALLET ↗
- Who funds FELDMAN CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA MUSICAL THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Virginia Chorale ↗
- Who funds TIDEWATER ARTS OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds ZEIDERS AMERICAN DREAM THEATER ↗
- Who funds PRIMEPLUS SENIOR CENTERS ↗
- Who funds BRITEPATHS INC ↗
- Who funds PLAZA VOL FIRE CO & RESCUE SQUAD ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONICITY-THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF VIRGINIA BEACH ↗
- Who funds OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ViBe District Virginia Beach ↗
- Who funds THE GOVERNOR'S SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF TIDEWATER INC ↗
- Who funds HAMPTON ROADS EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE INHEIRITANCE PROJECT LTD ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Hampton Roads Community Foundation · Business Consortium for Arts Support · United Way of South Hampton Roads · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Townebank Foundation · Tidewater Jewish Foundation Inc · Goode Family Foundation · The Barr Foundation · Patricia and Douglas Perry Foundation DBA The Perry Family Foundation · Sentara Health · The Dalis Foundation · Lafayette River 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 Helen G Gifford 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.