· Private foundation
Virginia Cretella Mars 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k29 grants · $681k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $400k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEIGHBORHOOD GARDEN TRUST | $50,000 |
| FRENCH & PICKERING CREEK CONSERVATION TRUST INC | $50,000 |
| READING TEAM | $50,000 |
| MIGHTY WRITERS | $50,000 |
| EVERYBODY MATTERS | $50,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ART GUILD | $50,000 |
| HEALTHY HUMOR | $50,000 |
| AUSBON SARGENT LAND PRESERVATION TRUST | $50,000 |
| JENKINS ARBORETUM & GARDENS | $41,498 |
| LITERACY LAB | $40,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE | $40,000 |
| CAPITOL HILL ARTS WORKSHOP | $40,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA EDUCATION FUND | $37,500 |
| BUILDING BRIDGES ACROSS THE RIVER | $35,000 |
| THEATRE BREAKING THROUGH BARRIERS | $35,000 |
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, $510k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 95% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +33% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 4 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- EMEVERYBODY MATTERS INC5× · 2020–2024 · $220k · revenue +56%
- NGNEIGHBORHOOD GARDENS TRUST5× · 2020–2024 · $215k · revenue +198%
- IFINSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF RELIANCE5× · 2020–2024 · $200k · revenue +137%
Funded once
- LSLAKE SUNAPEE PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $45k · revenue +66%
- SPSPARK PROGRAMone grant, 2020 · $30k
REACH EDUCATION INCone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -64%
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 philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
See schedule o.inspired by our home city, baltimore center stage acts as a cultural catalyst for all communities to access theater in every form and engage in compelling conversations. programming: capture the collective imagination and…
The association for public art (apa, formerly the fairmount park art association) commissions, preserves, interprets and promotes public art in philadelphia. dedicated to creating a museum without walls that informs, engages and inspires…
Springboard collaborative combines targeted student instruction with parent training in an incentivized system that closes the literacy gap, by transferring the summer from a barrier into a springboard for financially disadvantaged…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
Stages makes plays and tells stories that invite everyone to live more deeply and love more boldly.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Public Trust is a non-profit organization on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania that fosters learning, creativity, and collaboration in support of justice and equality.
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
To create and advance high quality, diverse educational communities that teach children the foundations of life-long learning and social responsibility.
We connect the people and places of philadelphia through art and partnership. the organization is a free-standing platform that endeavors to show forward-thinking, high-quality contemporary visual and performance art in the city. the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Urban Dove Inc and the most unlike its peers is Naptown Philharmonic Orchestra. 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 28 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 55 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 AUSBON SARGENT LAND PRESERVATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS ARTS GUILD ↗
- Who funds READING TEAM INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYBODY MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD GARDENS TRUST ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY HUMOR INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF RELIANCE ↗
- Who funds FRENCH AND PICKERING CREEKS CONSERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds THE LITERACY LAB ↗
- Who funds MIGHTY WRITERS ↗
- Who funds JENKINS ARBORETUM & GARDENS ↗
- Who funds Natural Lands Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds THEATER BREAKING THROUGH BARRIERS CORP ↗
- Who funds THE PHILADELPHIA EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SMITH MEMORIAL PLAYGROUND & PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL AQUARIUM INC ↗
- Who funds BEHIND THE BOOK INC ↗
- Who funds THE URBAN DOVE INC ↗
- Who funds SPARK THE JOURNEY ↗
- Who funds Critical Exposure Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CREATE ↗
- Who funds Capital Fringe Inc ↗
- Who funds Rosemount Center ↗
- Who funds FRINGEARTS ↗
- Who funds CAPITOL HILL ARTS WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds Naptown Philharmonic Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF BALTIMORE COUNTY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS ↗
- Who funds SHOUTMOUSEPRESSINC ↗
- Who funds LAKE SUNAPEE PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MURAL ARTS ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds BUILDING BRIDGES ACROSS THE RIVER 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: The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Greater Washington Community Foundation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · The William Penn Foundation · Nora Roberts Foundation · Dimick Foundation John M Lynham Jr Trustee · Humanities Council of Washington DC · United Way of the National Capital Area · Corina Higginson Trust Co Laura Ford Trustee · Harman Family Foundation · Philip L Graham Fund co Graham Holdings Company
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 Virginia Cretella Mars 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.
- Connecticut River Watershed Council Inc — 40% of income from government
- Arts for Learning Maryland Inc — 1% of income from government
- National Aquarium Inc — 1% 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 Virginia Cretella Mars Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Virginia Cretella Mars 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.