· Public charity
Alabama Forward
ALABAMA FORWARD is a state-based 501 (c) (3) civic engagement coordinating table committed to advancing movement towards greater freedom and progressive, solution-oriented policy among a diverse coalition of alabama-based partner organizations, so that every alabamian can engage in the democratic process.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $9k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $503k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $512k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRANSFORM ALABAMA | $139,606 |
| GASP | $70,500 |
| NAACP ALABAMA | $67,675 |
| HOMETOWN ORGANIZING PROJECT | $61,750 |
| ALABAMA COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE | $61,000 |
| PROJECT SAY SOMETHING | $60,000 |
| ALABAMA JUSTICE INITIATIVE | $51,000 |
| UNITED WOMEN OF COLOR | $49,430 |
| BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $46,000 |
| SOUTH ALABAMA BLACK WOMEN'S ROUNDTABLE | $46,000 |
| AKEEP | $40,000 |
| ALABAMA RIVERS ALLIANCE | $33,500 |
| METRO MONTGOMERY COUNTY NAACP | $30,650 |
| SWEET ALABAMA | $30,600 |
| HISPANIC INTEREST COALITION OF ALABAMA | $30,500 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY23–24, $124k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 60% of those 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Alabama Forward’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 1 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $106k 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
- HAHISPANIC AND IMMIGRANT CENTER OF ALABAMA4× · 2021–2024 · $197k · revenue +30%
- AJALABAMA JUSTICE INITIATIVE4× · 2021–2024 · $168k · revenue +24%
- SWSustainable Water Energy and Economic Transition in Alabama3× · 2022–2024 · $133k · revenue +202%
Funded once
- NCNational Coalition on Black Civic Particone grant, 2021 · $45k · revenue -18%
- SASOUTH ALABAMA BLACK WOMEN'S ROUNDTABLE (FISCAL SPONSOR THE DUBOIS INSTITUTone grant, 2022 · $38k
- FOFRIENDS OF WEST-ENDone grant, 2022 · $35k
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.
Out mission is to equip, inform and empower Black families with information on accessing a high quality k-12 education
To build awareness about disparities for the underserved and underrepresented that exist across Alabama and the nation through advocacy and education.
To engage Alabamians by mobilizing communities, setting and acting upon a racial equity and social justice policy agenda, and creating peace through racial reconciliation and healing.
A nonpartisan grassroots communication organization that works to raise awareness and increase engagement around community issues in alabama by working directly with civic organizations advocating civic participation in communities across…
To advocate for and promote access to health care for all alabamians.
Strengthen and support alabama nonprofits in serving their communities.
Our mission is to empower people across Birmingham through community education and organizing, ensuring neighborhoods have direct and democratic control over local resources and municipal spending while holding our government accountable…
To implement programs that empower communities and increase the quality of life of alabama residents
The mission of the Southern Black Policy and Advocacy Network is to improve health outcomes and to reduce social and economic disparities impacting Black communities living in the U.S. South.
Alabama forward is a state-based 501 (c) (3) civic engagement coordinating table committed to advancing movement towards greater freedom and progressive, solution-oriented policy among a diverse coalition of alabama-based partner…
To assist all persons, particularly minorities and the economicallydisadvantaged, in the achievement of social and economic equality,implementing program services in the areas of employment education, housingand youth services
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alabama Possible and the most unlike its peers is Hale County Community Enrichment Society Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 18 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 15% of your grantees by number, and just 17% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 6% lost their exemption, against 16% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
26 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. 26 of the 36 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 TRANSFORM ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds HOMETOWN ORGANIZING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC AND IMMIGRANT CENTER OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Gasp ↗
- Who funds THE BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Sustainable Water Energy and Economic Transition in Alabama ↗
- Who funds UNITED WOMEN OF COLOR ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN ACTION ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds Greater Birmingham Ministries ↗
- Who funds Project Say Something ↗
- Who funds ALIEEP / Alabama International Education & Economic Partnership ↗
- Who funds Alabama Rivers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ORDINARY PEOPLE SOCIETY TOPS ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA WOMEN COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA ARISE ↗
- Who funds DUBOIS INSTITUTE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP ↗
- Who funds National Coalition on Black Civic Partic ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD SOUTHEAST INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA POSSIBLE ↗
- Who funds STAND UP MOBILE A BLUEPRINT FOR US ↗
- Who funds OMEGA MEN OF NORTH ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds JOBS TO MOVE AMERICA ↗
- Who funds HALE COUNTY COMMUNITY ENRICHMENT SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ↗
- Who funds ENERGY 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: Bvm Capacity Building Institute Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Inc · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · The Black Belt Community Foundation Inc · Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation Incorporated · Tides Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Alabama Alliance Network · Arlington Partners Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Alabama Forward 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.