Virginia & West Virginia Grants for Nonprofits
Grants for Virginia and West Virginia nonprofits address a wide range of focus areas, from health grants to the arts. Learn more about grants for the Virginias with the search tool for Grant Finder. Become a member.
Giving Trends in Virginia
In contrast from it’s neighbor West Virginia, grants for Virginia nonprofits occupy a larger pool of opportunity. Virginian foundations, in excess of 1,600 organizations, gave about $800 million in grants in 2018. While it is one of the better funded giving ecosystems in the Southeast U.S., the gap between assets and actual giving is wider than in other places.
Grantmaking in Virginia has decreased across the board, but since 2014 has held steady with $806 million in grants in 2018 alone. Grants for education surpass all other givings areas in Virginia, more so than in any other Southeastern state. Other major areas of giving include arts and culture, human services and health.
Major funders in Virginia include the Charles Koch Foundation, Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond, Hampton Roads Community Foundation, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, The Batten Foundation, The Volgenau Foundation, Claws Foundation and The Northrop Grumman Foundation, among others.
Giving Trends in West Virginia
More so than in other parts of the South, rural philanthropy pigments West Virginia’s giving space, making it more challenging to fill gaps in services and support outcomes. It remains to be seen what approaches of rural work are successful as organizations build partnerships and knowledge between them to further drive giving. Spanning Appalachia, a historically underfunded and vulnerable region, West Virginian grantmaking is evolving to meet the demands of climate change pressures and drivers of historic inequality.
While the grantmaking ecosystem communicates with other organizations in the region, knowledge about grantmaking in the state is more insulated than elsewhere, filtering through Philanthropy West Virginia. Education remains at the forefront of giving in the state, but most other areas lag behind, especially health and the environment. In contrast from other landscapes, giving for the arts and for the environment are important focus areas here, concentrating on preserving West Virginia’s rich and long culture in light of competing pressures. Growing areas of funding include substance abuse and health, two areas for which many rural West Virginian organizations struggle to locate.
The top funders in West Virginia are a mix of private, public and rural funders. Major funders are predominately rural and grassroots, but also include bigger funders like the Community Foundation of the Virginias, Inc, Highmark Foundation, Dominion Energy, Fifth Third Bank Foundation, Truist, West Virginia Humanities Council, and the Shott Foundation, among others.
