· Private foundation
A Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k9 grants · $41k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $89k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| A STEP AHEAD | $20,000 |
| THE COOPERATIVE DOWNTOWN MINISTRIES | $19,000 |
| FAITH CHAPEL CARE CENTER | $10,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA AREA FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| FOOD FOR OUR JOURNEY | $10,000 |
| DESERT ISLAND SUPPLY COMPANY | $8,000 |
| CRAB TREE FARMS | $5,000 |
| ONE PLACE - METRO ALABAMA | $5,000 |
| UNFOUNDATION FUND CO COMMUNITY | $5,000 |
| ARTSBUILD | $5,000 |
| GLOVE | $4,000 |
| HISPANIC & IMMIGRANT CENTER OF AL | $3,000 |
| AL INITIATIVE FOR INDEPENDENT | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY22–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 97% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
11 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- CDCOOPERATIVE DOWNTOWN MINISTRIES INC4× · 2022–2025 · $68k · revenue +0%
- GPGIRLS PREPARATORY SCHOOL INC2× · 2023–2024 · $24k · revenue +68%
- AARTSBUILD3× · 2023–2025 · $20k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- TNTHE NORMAN & EMMY LOU ILLGES FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $2.4M · revenue -16%
- CICHATTANOOGANS IN ACTION FOR LOVEone grant, 2022 · $20k
- ACALABAMA CENTER FOR ARCHITECTUREgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +40%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Chattanooga design studio seeks to elevate the quality of life for all citizens through guidance, collaboration, innovation, and education that promotes livable, accessible, walkable, and humane urban design.
To advocate for people who are homless or near homeless, strategically planning for housing and services in the community, maximizing resources and collaboarating with community partners to implement housing and services within the…
Administration of federal, state and local awards and grants for the poverty sector of a 7 county area in alabama, providing headstart education, food, shelter, maintenance, and weatherization programs.
To improve student achievement in public schools through highly effective teaching, strong leadership, and strategic partnerships so that children succeed in learning and in life.
To feed people in need today and foster collaborative solutions to end hunger tomorrow.
Invest chattanooga uses flexible, low-cost capital and strategic public-private partnerships to produce financially sustainable, mixed-income housing with deep permanent affordability that the market alone cannot deliver.
Support of higher education through special projects of the university of tennessee at chattanooga
Our mission is to provide free food to needy families in appling county.
Family promise of greater chattanooga's mission is to provide help for homeless families with children be housed and self-sufficient.
Together with our community and partners, we transform generosity into lasting change towards a prosperous and just chattanooga where all can thrive and achieve their full potential.
To protect the architectural heritage of chattanooga through historic preservation, advocacy, and education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Artsbuild and the most unlike its peers is The Norman & Emmy Lou Illges Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 11 of the 25 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds THE NORMAN & EMMY LOU ILLGES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COOPERATIVE DOWNTOWN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR OUR JOURNEY ↗
- Who funds GIRLS PREPARATORY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ARTSBUILD ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE ↗
- Who funds Chattanooga Cares Inc ↗
- Who funds Chattanooga Area Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CRABTREE FARMS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC AND IMMIGRANT CENTER OF ALABAMA ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Weldon F Osborne Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization A Family Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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 your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not 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 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to A Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to A Family Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.