· Public charity
Virginia Eye Foundation
The foundation is dedicated to the improvement of eye care and the prevention of blindness.
Read this first · the figures below need context
74% of Virginia Eye Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Hampton Roads Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2018, the last year Virginia Eye Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 5 organizations, $80k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
The 5 grants below total $80,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $132,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $52,000 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2018
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $74k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTERN TIDEWATER FREE CLINIC | $25,000 |
| HEALTHY CHESAPEAKE | $24,000 |
| LIONS MEDICAL EYE BANK AND RESEARCH CENTER | $15,000 |
| FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS | $10,000 |
| CHESAPEAKE CARE INC | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–17, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 5%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
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 +25% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2018, 3 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (too recent to call). Read against FY2018, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- LMLIONS MEDICAL EYE BANK & RESEARCH CENTER OF EASTERN VIRGINIA INC3× · 2018–2022 · $38k · revenue +23%
- EBEye Bank Association of America2× · 2017–2024 · $35k · revenue +25%
THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC2× · 2017–2018 · $20k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- OMOLIVET MEDICAL MINISTRY INCone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +13%
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 mission of the edward via college of osteopathic medicine (vcom) is to prepare globally-minded, community-focused physicians to meet the needs of rural and medically underserved populations and promote research to improve human health.
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
The physicians of virtua medical group (vmg) share a common philosophy in all they do: to create an outstanding experience for patients. in a broad range of specialties, from family medicine to surgery to oncology, vmg's highly-trained…
To further the conservation, improvement and restoration of human eyesight" (mrs. doheny - 1947).
West virginia alliance for creative health solutions (wvachs) is a primary care practice-based research network (pbrn) leading patient-centered and community-oriented research to bring solutions to priority health disparities and health…
To improve the health and well-being of eastern north carolina.
The mission of wakemed is to improve the health and well-being of our community with outstanding and compassionate care to all.
To improve the health and well-being of eastern north carolina.
Collaborating with our members and stakeholders, vhha works to ensure the sustainability of virginia's health care system and improve the health of all virginians.
Our mission is to heal, comfort and care for the people of our community by providing advanced and compassionate health care of superior quality and value, supported by education and research.
To enhance the quality of life for the residents and visitors of dare county and the surrounding region by promoting wellness and providing the highest quality healthcare services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lions Medical Eye Bank & Research Center of Eastern Virginia Inc and the most unlike its peers is Eye Bank Association of America. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 12 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 HAMPTON ROADS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WESTERN TIDEWATER FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds LIONS MEDICAL EYE BANK & RESEARCH CENTER OF EASTERN VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds EVMS ACADEMIC PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS HEALTH SERVICES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Eye Bank Association of America ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY CHESAPEAKE INC ↗
- Who funds OLIVET MEDICAL MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE CARE 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 Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Virginia Eye 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Virginia Eye Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Virginia Eye 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.