· Private foundation
The Nora Roberts Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k9 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUDNATION OF WASHINGTON COUNTY | $2,090,000 |
| DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE | $10,000 |
| THE CHILDREN'S TREEHOUSE | $6,000 |
| KABOOM | $5,000 |
| FOR OTIS SAKE | $5,000 |
| GIRLS ON THE RUN | $3,250 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| THE CARTER CENTER | $2,000 |
| COUSTEAU SOCIETY | $1,000 |
| HATTERAS ISLAND RESCUE | $1,000 |
| RADIO HATTERAS | $1,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $169k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 39% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 40% of The Nora Roberts Family Foundation Inc’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, 93% of the giving stays in MD; read by stated purpose it is 55% — 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.
37 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 28 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, 2% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.1M 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
- SASHARPSBURG AREA EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE3× · 2020–2022 · $150k · revenue +50%
- OWOperation Warm Inc3× · 2020–2022 · $58k · revenue +172%
- DODefenders of Wildlife4× · 2020–2024 · $50k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- CICHILDREN IN NEED INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $27k · revenue +84%
- HCHATTERAS CIVIC ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k
- MOMISSION OF MERCY INCone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +11%
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.
Feral Cat Rescue provides support for spay and neutering feral cats in St. Mary's County, Maryland. Expenses include spay, neutering, vaccination against rabies and distemper, micro chipping, parasite control both internal and external and…
The hero rescue is formed by a network of volunteers and fosters committed to saving lives of animals at risk of euthanasia, abuse, and neglect. by relocating animals from over crowded shelters to maryland for adequate veterinary care,…
Wildlife rescue, inc. is dedicated to alleviating the suffering of sick, injured and orphaned animals. we assist maryland residents with emergencies, rescue and rehabilitation of wildlife with the goal of release back to nature. provide…
Concern's mission: concern brings hope, offers opportunity, and inspires change. concern's vision: to encourage growth and promote positive healthy lives.
Manna food center, inc strives to end hunger in our community through education, advocacy, and food distribution to individuals and partner agencies. manna's guiding principles are to be service-driven, community- centered and…
Founded in 1920 by mccormick spice company's entrepreneur willoughby mccormick, building families for children (bfc), formerly baptist family & children's services, exists to prove a safe, nurturing family for ever child and a supportive,…
Our mission is to help fill some of the gaps with the things these kids need most - backpacks and school supplies, warm new coats for winter and gifts to help make the holidays special. We work with local schools, shelters and churches to…
To save lives & relieve suffering through health interventions & related activities that strengthen communities affected by conflict, natural disasters & disease outbreaks.
Provide injured, ill, and orphaned wild animals with compassionate rehabilitative care, release them back to nature, and educate the public on the importance of these animals and how to help and co-exist with them.
Comfort cases was founded on a mission to provide comfort and support to the youth entering the foster care system. comfort cases provides cases filled with new essential and comfort items for youth.
Advancing hope, healing, and resilience for those impacted by trauma, abuse, and violence through comprehensive response, treatment, education, and prevention.
The westminster rescue mission is a community that provides clinical, physical, and spiritual resources to heal the addicted and feed the hungry. we take a holistic approach with christ as the foundation of our work.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Project Camp Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Humane Association. 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 26 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 46 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 SHARPSBURG AREA EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE ↗
- Who funds Operation Warm Inc ↗
- Who funds Defenders of Wildlife ↗
- Who funds FAHRNEY-KEEDY MEMORIAL HOME INC AKA FAHRNEY-KEEDY HOME AND VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds THE MARYLAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds Childrens Treehouse Child Development Center Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN IN NEED INC ↗
- Who funds KABOOM INC ↗
- Who funds ONLY MAKE BELIEVE INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds FIRST HOSE COMPANY OF BOONSBORO INC ↗
- Who funds GLENN DALE FIRE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds StoryBook Treasures Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN HUMANE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FRISCO FIRE PREVENTION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds MISSION OF MERCY INC ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SAN MAR CHILDREN'S HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Tabithas Table Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUR STATES CHRISTIAN MISSIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Girls on the Run of Mid and Western Mary ↗
- Who funds FREDERICK RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds RADIO HATTERAS INC ↗
- Who funds FREE2LUV 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: Nora Roberts Foundation · The Community Foundation of Washington County Maryland Inc · The Jone L Bowman Foundation Inc · Alice V & David W Fletcher Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Amazonsmile Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Nora Roberts Family Foundation Inc 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- San Mar Children's Home Inc — 29% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% 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 Nora Roberts Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Nora Roberts Family Foundation Inc 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.