Maryland · Nonprofit
THE OR FOUNDATION LTD
THE OR FOUNDATION LTD (Maryland) receives grants from 7 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,448,817 to it, the largest being IMPACTASSETSINC ($2,710,000). 5 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 81% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2024
- $8.4M
- Funders on record
- 7
- Grants received
- $3.4M
- Net assets
- $13M
What The or Foundation Ltd does
Mission
The Or Foundation provides critical ecosystem health services and community education and economic empowerment programming, that along with material technology and transformation and public engagement with citizens beyond their roles as consumers, drives toward a justice-led circular textiles economy.
As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.
Programs
Our Community Business Incubator provides business development support for existing upcycling and resale business within the Kantamanto Market ecosystem as well for our internally developed product lines as we strive to implement cooperative business models. With a curriculum on financial planning, market development and durable construction, we aim to bridge Kantamanto with new markets and audiences both in Ghana and internationally. We work closely with partners in the entrepreneurship space and in retail to provide transformative tools and platforms for small businesses based on repurposing fashion's waste, and we offer seed funding to eligible program participants. Core to this is fostering viable economic pathways for participants within our Mabilgu Program to take over and run our new product development initiatives as their own businesses with community buy-in throughout the entire supply chain. In order to support this vision our Community Business Incubation team is also responsible for training Mabilgu program participants in sewing and upcycling techniques along with economic principles throughout the Mabilgu observation period, during which we work with program…
$23,423 spentof which $664 as grants2% of program spendingWhile our previous and often-cited research, which was conducted between 2016 and 2019 and found that 40% of the average bale leaves Kantamanto as waste, revealing that there is too much clothing for any market in the world to safely handle, has been instrumental in driving attention and action on overproduction and overconsumption, we are now focused on mapping the ecological damage caused by such overflowing quantities of fashion waste. Since 2021 we have organized citizen scientists to perform weekly beach monitoring reports, tracking textile tentacles across a seven kilometer swath of Accra's beaches. Building on these findings we conduct weekly water and air sampling and analysis along with regular passive air pollution monitoring in order to track the flow of waste pollution across the coastal environment. We are now expanding this monitoring and mapping effort off of the coastline and into the Gulf of Guinea. Our team works in partnership with labs and experts both in Ghana and around the world to develop a detailed understanding of the environmental interactions between pollutants, weather systems and local ecologies. This data informs community-based remediation…
$84,771 spentof which $70,786 as grants8% of program spendingAfter COVID-19 lockdowns left Accra's kayayei community in a crisis without food, money for rent or healthcare, and after the December 2020 market fire destroyed over 200 market stalls before the holiday season, we began to formalize the direct relief efforts and crisis support that we had previously raised and redistributed on an as needed basis. We publicly established and resourced the Secondhand Solidarity Fund with the initial target of raising and distributing US$500,000 through the Fund annually, which we have achieved. Through our Secondhand Solidarity Fund, we distribute financial and in-kind support to over 1000 people annually, we install and maintain fire extinguishers throughout Kantamanto Market, and we offer tens of thousands of dollars in business transformation grants and low-to-no interest loans. Growing from the stability afforded through these immediate crisis relief efforts and drawing on educational programming coordinated by our Community Engagement and Business Incubation teams and on the infrastructure from our Mabilgu savings program, we have begun a community banking initiative within the Secondhand Solidarity Fund to leverage collective savings toward…
$140,000 spentof which $140,000 as grants13% of program spendingMATERIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENTWe have developed the methodology and community infrastructure to collect, sort, transport, store and process industrial scale quantities of clothing waste along a waste hierarchy informed by our local context. Following two years of product development, we are pushing toward the commercialisation of multiple material transformation pathways, including fiberboard and mops. Beyond material research and development, critical to this work is ensuring community benefit. The material systems we develop are based within the Kantamanto Market ecosystem. In addition to internally developed processes, we are working with an array of partners to pilot fiber-to-fiber recycling possibilities that we aim to operate in Ghana in collaboration with community members from across Kantamanto Market and the Ghanaian textile industry.Guiding the pace at which material innovation can create products that can safely be returned to the earth, we are working with partners and across our Material R&D, Community Engagement and Ecological Research and Remediation teams to design and build an accelerated bioreactor to decompose textile waste. Integral to these various…
$816,926 spentof which $612,747 as grants$5,170,090 earned by the program77% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2022 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,065,120.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2020, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2020, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2023 to 2024, from $7.9M to $13M (+60%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
96% of THE OR FOUNDATION LTD’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (48% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 5 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Elizabeth Rae Ricketts
Founder/executive director
As listed on its FY2024 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2020 → 2023: the base broadened from 2 funders to 4 funders, grant income rose $60k → $302k.
4 of 7 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 81% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of THE OR FOUNDATION LTD’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
THE OR FOUNDATION LTD leans on a few funders — its largest provides 79% of grant income and the top three 97%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
88% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund THE OR FOUNDATION LTD.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2020 100% · 2021 100% · 2022 85% · 2023 59% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Where its funders are
81% of THE OR FOUNDATION LTD's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $664k that is directly attributable, 100% of it comes from funders outside Maryland, across 3 states.
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $2.8M arriving through sponsors registered in 4 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
THE OR FOUNDATION LTD runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 11,752 education nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 11,752 education nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2024
Organizations like THE OR FOUNDATION LTD
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Maryland
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
92% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
80%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for THE OR FOUNDATION LTD: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds THE OR FOUNDATION LTD?
- THE OR FOUNDATION LTD (Maryland) receives grants from 7 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,448,817 to it, the largest being IMPACTASSETSINC ($2,710,000). 5 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 81% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does THE OR FOUNDATION LTD have?
- IRS filings report 7 organizations giving $3,448,817 in grants to THE OR FOUNDATION LTD, 5 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of THE OR FOUNDATION LTD?
- IMPACTASSETSINC is the largest funder on record, with $2,710,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like THE OR FOUNDATION LTD find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Maryland. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2020–2024), and the filings of 7 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing