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The Vision Council at a glance

· Public charity

The Vision Council

THE VISION COUNCIL's mission is to position members for success by promoting growth in the vision care industry through education, advocacy, research, consumer outreach, strategic relationship building and industry forums.

$118k
Granted FY2024still arriving
3
Grants FY2024still arriving
2
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Health$3.1MScience & Tech$53kPublic Benefit$19kPhilanthropy$10k
02FY2024 · 3 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 3 grants below total $26,551, the rows itemized in this filing. The $117,689 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $91,138 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k1 grant · $6k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
$10,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$19M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
OPTICS & ELECTRO OPTIC STANDARDS COUNCIL$10,121
JOBSON MEDICAL INFORMATION LLC - WEBMD HEALTH CORP$10,000
AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE$6,430
02The need
03

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:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 4% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%OPTICS & ELECTRO OPTIC STANDARDS COUNCIL: $19k → 14%NEW YORK STATE OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION: $16k → 14%AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE: $6k → 17%AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION: $10k → 11%OPTICIANS ASSN OF AMERICA: $8k → 17%GENYOUTH FOUNDATION: $10k → 14%NEW JERSEY SOCIETY OF OPTOMETRIC PHYSICIANS: $9k → 11%THINK ABOUT YOUR EYES LLC: $3.0M → 9%OPTICS & ELECTRO OPTIC STANDARDS COUNCIL: $18k → 14%NEW YORK STATE OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION: $10k → 14%AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE: $6k → 17%NEW JERSEY SOCIETY OF OPTOMETRIC PHYSICIANS: $9k → 11%OPTICS & ELECTRO OPTIC STANDARDS COUNCIL: $10k → 14%AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE: $6k → 14%AMERICAN NAT'L STANDARDS INST: $6k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
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.

Grants abroad, by region: $55k on the FY2024 return

Schedule F, as filed: 1 region. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.

Europe (including Iceland and Greenland)$55k · 100% · 3 grants

Stated purpose: ANNUAL FRIENDS OF VISION CONTRIBUTION · REFRACTIVE ERROR ADVOCACY CONTRIBUTION · PROJECT ASSISTANCE

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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

5%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$145k · 5 repeat orgs$3.0M to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +24% since the first grant, against +15% for those funded once.

5 repeat relationships: 2 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

5
5

Total granted

$145k
$3.0M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+24%
+15%

Still filing today

80%
60%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

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

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
Public BenefitPhilanthropyOther
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

  • OA
    OPTICS AND ELECTRO OPTICS STANDARDS COUNCIL
    3× · 2022–2024 · $47k · revenue +19% · 27% of their budget
  • NY
    NEW YORK STATE OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION INC
    2× · 2018–2019 · $26k · revenue +36%
  • AN
    AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE
    4× · 2019–2024 · $25k · revenue +24%

Funded once

  • TA
    THINK ABOUT YOUR EYES LLC
    one grant, 2017 · $3.0M
  • JM
    JOBSON MEDICAL INFORMATION LLC
    one grant, 2019 · $13k
  • GI
    GenYOUTH Incorporated
    one grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +15%
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
04the grantee network

7 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. 7 of the 11 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.

1
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
6/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

THINK ABOUT YOUR EYES LLC: $3,000,000 · OtherTHINK ABOUT YOUR EYES LLC+8 more: $160,181 · OtherAMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE: $24,720 · Public BenefitGenYOUTH Incorporated: $10,000 · Philanthropy
Other$3,160,181Public Benefit$24,720Philanthropy$10,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetOPTICS AND ELECTRO OPTICS STANDARDS COUNCIL: $46,681 over 3y, 27% of budgetNEW YORK STATE OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION INC: $25,500 over 2y, 2.9% of budgetAMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE: $24,720 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetNEW JERSEY SOCIETY OF OPTOMETRIC PHYSICIANS: $18,000 over 2y, 0.9% of budgetGenYOUTH Incorporated: $10,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetThe American Optometric Association: $10,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetOPTICIANS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: $7,500 over 1y, 1.6% of budget
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.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Vision Council funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Vision Council. Bigger dots raise more.

2023
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%2%8%17%30%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    1get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 11 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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    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