The Foundation Fighting Blindness Inc
Columbia, MD · EIN 23-7135845. Reported 121 grants totalling $83.8M to 48 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. For The Foundation Fighting Blindness Inc, the IRS classifies it under medical research rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE H410) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
- How spread out its giving is. 48 distinct organizations, with 56% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is concentrated. Most of the money has a settled destination, and the remainder is what is realistically in play.
- How much its list changes. 84% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is well above the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% private foundations manage. This list is close to settled, so a newcomer has to displace someone rather than fill a gap.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $199,999. Half of what it reported fell between $100,000 and $499,940; the smallest was $24,565 and the largest $15.1M. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation Fighting Blindness Retinal Degeneration Fund | Columbia, MD | $47.1M | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Presbyterian Medical Center of the University of Pennsylvania Health | Philadelphia, PA | $4,061,115 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Oregon Health and Science University Foundation | Portland, OR | $2,893,512 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| University of Washington Foundation | Seattle, WA | $2,754,385 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Duke University | Durham, NC | $2,600,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Mass General Brigham Incorporated | Somerville, MA | $2,211,667 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Trustees of Columbia University | New York, NY | $2,093,382 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Regents of the University of California at San Diego | La Jolla, CA | $1,700,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Regents of the University of California at Irvine | Irvine, CA | $1,514,667 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Odylia Therapeutics Inc | Atlanta, GA | $1,500,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Baylor College of Medicine | Houston, TX | $1,399,820 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| University of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh, PA | $1,030,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Fordham University | Bronx, NY | $1,019,171 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Case Western Reserve University | Cleveland, OH | $1,000,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Biojiva | Los Atlos, CA | $947,967 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Mitochem Therapeutics Inc | Charleston, SC | $900,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | Cambridge, MA | $804,446 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Regents of the University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI | $575,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Michigan State University | East Lansing, MI | $534,092 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| University of Alabama at Birmingham | Birmingham, AL | $499,892 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| University Hospitals Health System Inc | Shaker Hts, OH | $446,082 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Trustees of Tufts College | Medford, MA | $399,974 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| University of Wisconsin Foundation | Madison, WI | $397,720 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Jackson Laboratory | Bar Harbor, ME | $379,423 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Indiana University | Bloomington, IN | $338,514 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| University of Houston | Houston, TX | $320,800 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Johns Hopkins University | Baltimore, MD | $316,454 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| The Medical University of South Carolina Foundation | Charleston, SC | $304,437 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| University of California Santa Barbara | Santa Barbara, CA | $300,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| University of Delaware | Newark, DE | $300,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| New York STEM Cell Foundation Inc | New York, NY | $296,150 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Oakland University | Rochester, MI | $285,920 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Michigan State University | East Lansing, MI | $265,908 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, NC | $250,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| University of Louisville Foundation Inc | Louisville, KY | $227,572 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| University of Florida Research Foundation Inc | Gainesville, FL | $224,565 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Regents Univ of California | Los Angeles, CA | $200,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Retina Foundation of the Southwest | Dallas, TX | $200,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| The Medical College of Wisconsin Inc | Milwaukee, WI | $200,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| University of California- Davis | Davis, CA | $200,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Emory University | Atlanta, GA | $150,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | Urbana, IL | $150,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Foundation for the National Institute of Health Inc | Rockville, MD | $125,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| University of Missouri | Columbia, MO | $119,955 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| University of Massachusetts Amherst | Hadley, MA | $100,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Marquette University | Milwaukee, WI | $96,636 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| The Ohio State University | Columbus, OH | $75,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston | Houston, TX | $49,996 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
39 of 48 (81%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 34 of 48 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 25 | $22.2M | $150,000 |
| 2022 | 28 | $24.4M | $232,927 |
| 2023 | 30 | $17.5M | $233,343 |
| 2024 | 38 | $19.7M | $200,000 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
57% of its giving went to organizations in Maryland. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $199,999 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Maryland.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from The Foundation Fighting Blindness Inc's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 37 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 1 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.
Address of record on the latest return: 6925 Oakland Mills Road 701, Columbia, MD, 21045.
EIN 23-7135845 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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