· Private foundation
Ames Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k9 grants · $280k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $585k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TUSKEGEE UNIVERSITY | $165,000 |
| THINK OF US | $70,000 |
| LEELANAU CONSERVANCY | $50,000 |
| SEEDS | $50,000 |
| SOUL FIRE FARM | $50,000 |
| GRAND TRAVERSE REGIONAL LAND CONSER | $50,000 |
| TART TRAILS INC | $50,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| UPPER PENINSULA LAND CONSERVANCY | $50,000 |
| THE ATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $45,000 |
| CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERKEEPER | $45,000 |
| ONE HUNDRED MILES | $40,000 |
| CLARKSTON COMMUNITY CENTER | $35,000 |
| GRAND TRAVERSE CONSERVATION DISTRIC | $25,000 |
| THE BERRY CENTER | $25,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $171k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
30 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 2 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
- TUTuskegee University5× · 2020–2024 · $890k · revenue +42%
- ACATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC5× · 2020–2024 · $290k · revenue +50%
- CRCHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERKEEPER INC5× · 2020–2024 · $265k · revenue +35%
Funded once
- FTFeeding the Gulf Coastone grant, 2020 · $75k · revenue +11%
- BOBLACK OAKS CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE RENEWABLE LIVINGgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +338%
- HPHigher Purpose Hubgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +109%
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.
The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Protect Connecticuts farmland for agricultural use by purchasing and accepting donations of agricultural conservation easements
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
The organization's primary mission is conserving land where people and nature can thrive by creating green corridors linking existing public lands using conservation easments and outright purchase.
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
Maine Farmland Trust protects farmland, supports farmers, and advances the future of farming.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Soul Fire Farm Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 41 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 43 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 Tuskegee University ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds TRAVERSE AREA RECREATION & TRANSPORTATION TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUL FIRE FARM INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND TRAVERSE REGIONAL LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LEELANAU CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds UPPER PENINSULA LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THINK OF US ↗
- Who funds One Hundred Miles Inc ↗
- Who funds SEEDS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Feeding the Gulf Coast ↗
- Who funds THE BERRY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK OAKS CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE RENEWABLE LIVING ↗
- Who funds Higher Purpose Hub ↗
- Who funds Autism Improvised Inc ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE CUMBERLANDS INC ↗
- Who funds BERRY COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds Father Flanagan's Boys' Home ↗
- Who funds FAIRHOPE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT INC ↗
- Who funds The Baldwin County Humane Society ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL RIGHT TO WORK LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
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: Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Ames 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.