· Private foundation
The Watterson 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
- $50k–250k2 grants · $250k
- $250k+4 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOSPICE OF THE PIEDMONT | $350,000 |
| WEATHERHEAD SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT | $350,000 |
| CHARLOTTESVILLE ALBEMARLE SPCA | $270,000 |
| THE BLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK | $250,000 |
| CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $150,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF CHARLOTTESV | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–22, $23k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% 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.
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 +71% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 41 since wound down; 3 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $720k 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
- HOHOSPICE OF THE PIEDMONT INC5× · 2019–2024 · $361k · revenue +20%
- BRBLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK INC7× · 2017–2024 · $266k · revenue +51%
- SCSENIOR CENTER INC4× · 2017–2020 · $16k · revenue +62%
Funded once
- TETUESDAY EVENING CONCERT SERIES INCone grant, 2018 · $6k · revenue -6%
- TETHE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNIONone grant, 2021 · $5k
- CACHARLOTTESVILLE AREA COMMUNITY FOUNone grant, 2020 · $3k
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.
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…
To deliver important healthcare services with exceptional quality and patient-centered care.
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.
To provide administrative services to university of virginia (university) entities, university associated organizations, or other entities involved in activities which support the university. to engage in matters pertaining to real…
The mission of transitions family violence services (tfvs) is to build safe and healthy families on the virginia peninsula by providing services to adult and child victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. we work to increase…
Home of va ensures equal access to housing opportunities by building individual capacity, ensuring compliance with fair housing laws, and promoting effective public policy to advance housing justice.
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…
Providing life-enriching services that promote well-being and build community.
The mission of goodwin house incorporated ("ghi") is to support, honor and uplift the lives of older adults and the people who care for them through a faith-based, nonprofit organization affiliated with the episcopal church.
Virginia community action partnership (vacap) is the statewide membership association for virginia's thirty-one non-profit and public community action agencies. vacaps mission is to build the capacity and competencies of virginias…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Bridgeline and the most unlike its peers is International Essential Tremor Foundation. 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 39 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 112 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 HOSPICE OF THE PIEDMONT INC ↗
- Who funds ALBEMARLE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE RIDGE AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds TRI-RIVER HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds International Essential Tremor Foundation ↗
- Who funds Madison House ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR INTERFAITH MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE HAVEN AT FIRST AND MARKET INC ↗
- Who funds TUESDAY EVENING CONCERT SERIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE EDITH AND THEODORE ROOSEVELT PINE KNOT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MILLER CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE AND CONGREGATIONS ENGAGED IN MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds READYKIDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF CHARLOTTESVILLE- ALBEMARLE ↗
- Who funds THE BRIDGE MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS HOME INC ↗
- Who funds LAKEVIEW CEMETERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COUNCIL OF TRUSTEES AND ALUMNI ↗
- Who funds Transformation Inc ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee 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: Charlottesville Area Community Foundation · The Charles Fund Inc · Perry Foundation Inc · The J & E Berkley Foundation · The Better Living Foundation · S&P Global Foundation Fka the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation · The Oak Hill Fund · Caplin Foundation · Manning Family Foundation · The Genan Foundation · Whitney and Anne Stone Foundation · Thomas C & Mary Ann Hays Fam Char Tr
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 Watterson 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.