· Private foundation
The Mary Morton Parsons 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $410k
- $50k–250k22 grants · $2.2M
- $250k+16 grants · $6.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $1,000,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $750,000 |
| CROSS-OVER MINISTRY | $605,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF RICHMOND | $500,000 |
| LIBERATION VETERAN SERVICES INC | $500,000 |
| VIRGINIA REPERTORY THEATRE | $500,000 |
| BETTER HOUSING COALITION | $500,000 |
| CARITAS | $365,000 |
| COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION | $320,000 |
| HAMPDEN-SYDNEY COLLEGE | $300,000 |
| VIRGINIA TECH FOUNDATION INC | $300,000 |
| VERITAS SCHOOL | $250,000 |
| BRIDGEWATER COLLEGE | $250,000 |
| PCS FOR PEOPLE | $250,000 |
| VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE | $250,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $4.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 92% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 99% of the giving stays in VA; read by stated purpose it is 93% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
66 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 28 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, 44% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.1M 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
- BHBETTER HOUSING COALITION3× · 2020–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +186%
- NRNEXTUP RVA7× · 2018–2024 · $835k · revenue +102%
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF RICHMOND2× · 2023–2024 · $750k · revenue +144%
Funded once
- SJST JOSEPH'S VILLAgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $750k · revenue +27%
- LGLEWIS GINTER BOTANICAL GARDEN INCone grant, 2023 · $750k · revenue -1%
- SMSCIENCE MUSEUM OF VIRGINIAone grant, 2023 · $510k
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 foundation determines the patentability and obtains patents on virginia commonwealth university (vcu) inventions and markets and licenses such inventions to commerical entities. the foundation's activities promote research efforts at…
To provide investment and investment management and related services to the rector and the board of visitors of virginia commonwealth university (vcu), and/or to the private and independent foundations and other entities affiliated with…
The richmond symphony performs, teaches and champions music to inspire and unite our communities.
The virginia association of museums is a statewide network serving the museum community. the association's mission statement is "the virginia association of museums helps our museum community succeed".
To use the power of media to educate, entertain and inspire, using public television and public radio to make a positive impact on the communities throughout central virginia, charlottesville, the shenandoah valley, the northern neck and…
New schools for virginia works with parents, students, educators and the community to improve educational outcomes by designing new schools and by supporting existing schools to improve outcomes.
To use policy, research, and analysis to advance the well-being of Virginia communities, and improve the economic security and social opportunities of all Virginians.
Chamberrva is the trusted voice for modern business in the richmond virginia region. we are change agents, rallying to do the hard things that will create a more connected, prosperous, health and equitable community.
Vcn is a facilitator of strategic action, a resource for network partners statewide, and a constant preservation presence in richmond. playing a unique role in virginia's conservation community, vcn helps the community speak with one…
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).
To provide excellence in the delivery of healthcare.
The mission of vt-arc is to extend the impact of the virginia tech research and innovation enterprise, delivering superior analytic and technology solutions to government and non-government customers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Historic Richmond Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Southampton County Historical Society. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.4% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
244 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 244 of the 332 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 BETTER HOUSING COALITION ↗
- Who funds CARITAS ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NEXTUP RVA ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH'S VILLA ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds LEWIS GINTER BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF RICHMOND ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CROSS-OVER MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLLEGIATE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FEED MORE INC ↗
- Who funds THE VALENTINE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ELDERHOMES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SupportWorks Housing ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF VA ANTIQUITIES ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey Richmond High School Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF METRO RICHMOND ↗
- Who funds ST CHRISTOPHER'S SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA STUDENT AID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA REPERTORY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds SHELTERING ARMS CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL REGION LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGEWATER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds LIBERATION VETERAN SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Greater Richmond (6769) ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE FDN ↗
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: The Community Foundation Inc · Robert G Cabell III and Maude Morgan Cabell Foundation · Herndon Foundation · Robins Foundation · Richard S Reynolds Foundation · The Pauley Family Foundation · Virginia Nonprofit Housing Coalition · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Townebank Foundation · Richmond Memorial Health Foundation · Shelton H Short Jr Trust · The William H - John G - Emma Scott 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 Mary Morton Parsons 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.
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.