Victory Foundation

Victory Foundation is a small, closely held family trust — roughly $7.26 million in assets — governed by a single trustee, Victoria McNeil Le Vine, and administered through Wilmington Trust Company at 1100 North Market Street, Wilmington, DE. It is not a staffed foundation with program officers; officer compensation has been $0 in every filed year. Its own IRS filings flag it as accepting grants to "preselected organizations only," which, combined with the absence of any application_form_url, deadline, or published instructions in its record, confirms this is a closed, relationship-driven funder rather than an open-RFP grantmaker. This is reinforced by the sister Le Vine Family Foundation of Bryn Mawr, PA — co-trusteed by Victoria McNeil Le Vine and D Christopher Le Vine — which is independently documented as making contributions "only to preselected charitable organizations" and shows an overlapping Philadelphia-region arts-and-education grantee pattern. The two vehicles read as parallel, closed giving arms of the same family. Grantee history shows strong institutional loyalty: the Philadelphia Museum of Art received five separate grants totaling $942,500, and the Kennedy Center received five grants totaling $473,000, spanning capital campaigns, endowment gifts, and annual operating pledges. Once an organization enters the portfolio, it tends to receive recurring, multi-year support rather than a single gift. First-time applicants without an existing personal or institutional connection to the trustee, her family network, or Wilmington Trust's philanthropic services face very long odds of a cold approach succeeding — there is no inbox or portal built to receive one. The realistic path in is indirect: board or gala involvement with the foundation's core institutions (Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, the Kennedy Center, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy), or positioning as a partner/feeder organization to one of them. Best-fit prospects are established (not early-stage) Philadelphia-region arts, culture, and education institutions — museums, performing-arts companies, independent schools, and youth arts-education nonprofits — rather than health, human-services, or national/international causes. Smaller organizations do appear in the grantee list, typically at $1,000-$25,000, usually already adjacent to the funder's existing network (youth theatre companies, arts-education nonprofits) rather than newly discovered.

Across the years of Form 990-PF data reviewed, Victory Foundation's tracked giving totals $2,794,500 across 70 identifiable grants to 38 distinct recipient organizations, averaging $39,921 per recipient relationship (a figure that reflects cumulative, often multi-year giving rather than single-grant size). The most recent single fiscal year's grant list (26 grants) shows a median of $13,750, an average of $29,712, and a range of $1,000-$190,000; Instrumentl separately reports FY2024 activity of 27 awards totaling $931,000, with a top gift as high as $350,000. Annual giving has moved from $237,350 (FY2011, following a one-time $5 million corpus contribution) to $549,650 (FY2013), spiked to $2,693,992 in FY2015 (evidently a large one-time capital disbursement), then settled into a steadier band: $725,893 (FY2019), $772,500 (FY2020), $839,000 (FY2021), a peak of $1,011,000 (FY2022), $942,500 (FY2023), and roughly $931,000-$949,000 (FY2024) — giving has plateaued since the FY2022 high rather than continuing to grow. Total assets have stayed remarkably flat for over a decade — $7,290,766 in 2011 versus $7,263,046 in the most recent filing — meaning the trust distributes investment income and realized gains rather than building its corpus, consistent with a spend-oriented family vehicle. Geographically, giving is overwhelmingly Philadelphia-centered despite Delaware domicile: Pennsylvania accounts for 51 of 70 tracked grants (73%), followed by New York (8), Washington DC (5), Virginia (3), Florida (2), and Georgia (1). Programmatically, despite a generic "Community Development" tag inherited from NTEE code T20Z in aggregator databases, the actual grant purposes are dominated by arts and culture: museums (Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum), performing arts (the Kennedy Center, Wilma Theater, Theatre Horizon, Bucks County Playhouse, People's Light, Curtis Institute of Music, Academy of Vocal Arts), and youth arts education (Fleisher Art Memorial, Taller Puertorriqueño, After School Activities Partnerships). A secondary vein supports independent-school and higher-education capital campaigns — Springside Chestnut Hill Academy ($300,000 across 2 grants), Carnegie Mellon University ($65,000), and PAFA scholarship funds ($175,000). Grant sizes bifurcate sharply: a handful of flagship-institution relationships (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kennedy Center, Springside Chestnut Hill, Barnes Foundation, PAFA) account for roughly 82% of the $2.79 million tracked total, while dozens of smaller theatre and arts-education nonprofits split the remainder in $1,000-$25,000 increments.

The tight clustering of asset values (all within about $6,500 of Victory Foundation's $7,263,046) is a byproduct of asset-tier peer matching, not evidence these organizations share a program focus — none of the five publish a website or public grant list, so no direct focus-area comparison is possible from public sources alone. Within this asset tier, Victory Foundation is unusual for being reasonably well-documented through Form 990-PF aggregators and for having one visible public touchpoint (the Theatre Philadelphia Victory Theatre Education Award); most $7 million family trusts at this size are entirely invisible to prospective applicants. A more informative behavioral peer outside the asset-matched list is the Le Vine Family Foundation of Bryn Mawr, PA, which shares trustee Victoria McNeil Le Vine: $3.8 million in assets, $445,000 distributed across 30 grants in 2023 (median $10,000, range $1,000-$75,000), concentrated in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio, and likewise restricted to preselected organizations — suggesting the same trustee runs two parallel closed giving vehicles with similar mechanics and grant-size ranges.

No dedicated 2025 or 2026 press coverage of Victory Foundation grantmaking was found in open web search — consistent with a closed family trust that has no communications function and is administered through Wilmington Trust Company's institutional trust services. The most concrete recent activity is the FY2024 Form 990-PF filing (aggregated by Instrumentl and ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer), showing $931,000-$949,217 in charitable disbursements across 27 grants, with total assets holding at $7,263,046 — continuing the plateau that began after the FY2022 peak of $1,011,000. The foundation's most visible public touchpoint remains its co-sponsorship, with Theatre Philadelphia, of the "Victory Theatre Education Award" within the Barrymore Awards, which recognizes an outstanding youth theatre-education program in the Philadelphia region with a $10,000 prize and $2,500 awards to finalists. That award was paused for the 2023/24 season, and no public confirmation was found that it resumed for 2025 or 2026 — organizations interested in this pathway should confirm current status directly with Theatre Philadelphia rather than assume it is active. No leadership changes were identified: Victoria McNeil Le Vine continues as sole trustee, reporting $0 in officer compensation across every filed year, and the same Wilmington Trust Company administrative arrangement (1100 North Market Street, Wilmington, DE; phone 302-651-1437) appears to remain in place. One important caution for anyone researching this funder further: the domain listed in public records as this foundation's website, victory-foundation.org, is actually operated by a separate, unrelated nonprofit called "The Victory Foundation," focused on mental-health, addiction-recovery, and cancer-support grant nominations, which recently held its first annual gala raising $500,000. That organization's news and application process have no connection to the Wilmington, DE trust covered in this report.

Treat this as a closed, invitation- and relationship-based funder, not an open-application grantmaker. Its own IRS filings designate it "preselected organizations only," and there is no application_form_url, deadline, or published instructions on record — a cold LOI or portal submission is very unlikely to be reviewed. Do not submit anything through the nomination form at victory-foundation.org: that site belongs to a different, unrelated "Victory Foundation" focused on mental health, addiction recovery, and cancer support, and nothing submitted there will reach trustee Victoria McNeil Le Vine's Wilmington, DE trust. The realistic way in is relationship-based: build visibility with the trustee's existing institutional network. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, the Kennedy Center, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy are this foundation's largest and most recurring beneficiaries, so board members, gala co-chairs, and development staff at those institutions are the most credible referral sources. Smaller and newer organizations do get funded, but almost always ones already adjacent to that network's orbit — youth theatre companies (Wilma Theater, Theatre Horizon, People's Light), and arts-education nonprofits (Fleisher Art Memorial, Taller Puertorriqueño, After School Activities Partnerships). Positioning as a partner or 'feeder' organization to an already-funded institution — shared programming, joint initiatives, board overlap — will move the needle more than a standalone cold pitch. If your organization runs youth theatre-education programming in the Philadelphia region, the Theatre Philadelphia "Victory Theatre Education Award" (Barrymore Awards) is a legitimate, semi-public on-ramp — but confirm its current-cycle status directly with Theatre Philadelphia, since it was paused for 2023/24 and its 2025/26 status is unconfirmed. When support does materialize, expect it to be durable and multi-installment: the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Kennedy Center each received five separate grants over the tracked period, blending pledge installments, campaign gifts, and annual operating support — frame any relationship-building as a long-term proposition, not a one-time ask. Grant sizes to smaller or first-time grantees cluster in the $1,000-$25,000 range (many at $1,000-$5,000); set expectations accordingly rather than pitching at the $100,000+ level reserved for entrenched flagship relationships. Because there is no program staff — officer compensation has been $0 in every filed year — do not expect a program-officer conversation; a warm personal introduction to the trustee, or outreach through Wilmington Trust Company's philanthropic trust services, is far more productive than any generic inquiry line.