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Vital Communities Inc at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Vital Communities Inc

Vital communities engages upper valley people, organizations, and communities to create equitable solutions to our region's challenges, with a focus on those disproportionately impacted by them.

$347k
Granted FY2025still arriving
9
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$241k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its 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, FY2018 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$241kFood & Nutrition$200kCommunity Improvement$35kEnvironment$29kHealth$9k
02FY2025 · 9 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 9 grants below total $316,477, the rows itemized in this filing. The $347,248 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $30,771 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 · FY2025

  • Under $10k5 grants · $35k
  • $10k–50k3 grants · $40k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $241k
$9,092
Median grant
2
States reached
$1.3M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
WINTER CENTER FOR INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS$241,188
GREEN MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION$15,000
ORGANIZATION FOR REFUGEE AND IMMIGRANT SUCCESS$15,000
TWO RIVERS-OTTAUQUECHEE REGIONAL COMMISSION$10,000
MOON AND STARS$9,092
KEARSARGE FOOD HUB$7,777
FEEDING THE VALLEY ALLIANCE$7,285
OTTAUQUECHEE NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION DISTRICT$5,900
SULLIVAN COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT$5,235
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:

Its human-services grants (FY25–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 7%ORGANIZATION FOR REFUGEE AND IMMIGRANT SUCCESS: $15k → 7%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.
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.
03Its 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 14 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
4/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions: $241,188 · Arts & CultureWinter Center for Indigenous TraditionsGLOBAL VILLAGE FOODS: $163,400 · OtherGLOBAL VILLAGE FOODSGreen Mountain Economic Development Corp: $15,000 · OtherGreen Mountain Economic Development CorpMARSH-BILLINGS-ROCKEFELLER NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK: $11,000 · OtherMOON AND STARS CORP: $9,092 · Other+4 more: $25,363 · Other+4 moreORGANIZATION FOR REFUGEE AND: $15,000 · Human ServicesVERMONT SUSTAINABLE JOBS FUND INC: $10,000 · EmploymentTwo Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Foundation Inc: $10,000 · Community ImprovementKEARSARGE FOOD HUB INC: $7,777 · Food & NutritionSustainable Woodstock Inc: $6,536 · Environment
Arts & Culture$241,188Other$223,855Human Services$15,000Employment$10,000Community Improvement$10,000Food & Nutrition$7,777Environment$6,536

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

25%50%75%100%$1.0Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetGreen Mountain Economic Development Corp: $15,000 over 1y, 2.2% of budgetVERMONT SUSTAINABLE JOBS FUND INC: $10,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetSustainable Woodstock Inc: $6,536 over 1y, 2.1% 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.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift FundMA3.3× affinity4 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%6%25%56%100%funder's share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government →median 51%
  • Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund Inc: 51% of income from government
  • Green Mountain Economic Development Corp: 34% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
1rely on government for over half their income
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 14 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 2025, released 2025. 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