· Private foundation
Virginia Martin Howard Foundation
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
55% of Virginia Martin Howard Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to National Philanthropic Trust, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 9 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Virginia Martin Howard Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 16 organizations, $524k. 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.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k4 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $288k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $215k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GETTY MUSIC LABEL LLC | $100,000 |
| ARTS ON ALEXANDER | $65,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $50,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL LOUISIANA | $35,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY NETWORK | $30,000 |
| ROOTED MINISTRY | $30,000 |
| GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH | $25,000 |
| MCGREGOR BAPTIST CHURCH | $25,000 |
| LOUISIANA BAPTIST CHILDREN'S HOME | $20,000 |
| HOPE HOUSE OF CENTRAL LOUISIANA | $15,000 |
| YWCA OF ALEXANDRIAPINEVILLE | $13,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $10,000 |
| FOSTERING COMMUNITY | $10,000 |
| CENTRAL LOUISIANA COALITION TO PREVENT HOMELESSNESS | $10,000 |
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 (FY22–22, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
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 100% of Virginia Martin Howard Foundation’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, 10% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 100% — more 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +102% since the first grant, against -65% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2022, 7 since wound down; 9 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $43k 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
- SPSAMARITAN'S PURSE6× · 2017–2022 · $300k · revenue +134%
- LFLSU FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $250k · revenue +103%
- TGTHE GETTY MUSIC FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2024 · $220k · revenue +34% · 71% of their budget
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $50k
- LSLOUISIANA SCHOOL FOR MATH SCIENCE AND THE ARTSone grant, 2017 · $45k
- LFLSUA FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $20k
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 strengthen, promote, and build the capacity of louisiana's nonprofit sector through education, advocacy, and member services.
Central louisville community ministries provides emergency assistance for rent, utilities and medication. also provide in-kind assistances for food, clothing, personal care items,school supplies and haircut vouchers.
To promote architecture.
The mission of the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce is: to promote economic growth for central Louisiana and its citizens; to serve as a business advocate for our members; and to foster a business climate that supports business and…
To provide sound analysis of state fiscal issues to promote economic prosperity, a rising standard of living, and the opportunity for all citizens to reach their highest potential.
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
The mission of the association shall be to promote communication and interaction among members and to provide education and training programs on issues of hunger and food banking.
The mission is to protect, promote, and foster the welfare of louisiana state university and to create and nurture mutually beneficial relationships between the university and its alumni and friends. the association, using the talents and…
To support the work of the amercian civil liberties union of louisiana through litigation, public education and limited lobbying in support of civil liberties.
To promote advocacy on legislative issues in support of civil rights and liberties. to advance the organization's civil rights and civil liberties agenda in the state of louisiana legislature.
Using direct representation and advocacy, we fight to keep children out of the justice system so that they can thrive in their homes and communities.
The mission of the new orleans museum of art is to inspire the love of art; to collect, preserve, exhibit and present excellence in the visual arts; to educate, challenge and engage a diverse public.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Central Louisiana Inc and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 32 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 44 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 NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds LSU FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GETTY MUSIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE OF CENTRAL LOUISIANA ↗
- Who funds ARTS ON ALEXANDER ↗
- Who funds LOUISIANA BAPTIST CHILDRENS HOME AND FAMILY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL LOUISIANA ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL LOUISIANA COALITION TO PREVENT HOMELESSNESS INC ↗
- Who funds FOSTERING COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Alexandria Museum of Art LLC ↗
- Who funds AFRICA RENEWAL MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds ROOTED MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH NURSES ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL LOUISIANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL LOUISIANA INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA OF ALEXANDRIA-PINEVILLE ↗
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 Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Christus Health · The Scott Foundation · United Way of Central Louisiana Inc · Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Raymond James Charitable Endowment 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 Virginia Martin Howard 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 Martin Howard Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Virginia Martin Howard 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.