· Private foundation
Athens Federal Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k33 grants · $150k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $164k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YMCA of Athens | $25,000 |
| Tennessee Wesleyan University | $25,000 |
| YMCA of Athens | $20,000 |
| McMinn Education and Community Foundation - Compasion Closet | $20,000 |
| Tennessee Wesleyan University - Love Thy Neighbor Project | $15,000 |
| Miracle Lake Inc | $15,000 |
| Englewood Rural Fire Department | $12,200 |
| CASA Cooradoir of TN | $12,000 |
| Etowah Rescue Squad | $10,000 |
| The HOPE Center Inc | $10,000 |
| CASA Monroe | $8,000 |
| McMinn County Emergency & Rescue Squad | $7,850 |
| Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church - Etowah Community Food Pantry | $7,500 |
| Monroe Tri-Community Volunteer Fire Department Inc | $7,000 |
| Coordinated Charities of Athens | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $115k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 98% 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.
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.
59 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 36 since wound down; 19 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $154k 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
- TWTENNESSEE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2019–2025 · $200k · revenue +43%
- MCMCMINN CO EDUCATIONAL & COMMUNITY FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $138k · revenue +21%
- MLMIRACLE LAKE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $133k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- YLYMCA - LOCKER ROOM PROJECTone grant, 2024 · $100k
- TWTENNESSEE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY - LOVE THY NEIGHBORone grant, 2024 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $8k
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.
Serving the homeless population
The Mend House is a sober living community for men, in Knoxville, Tn. which empowers them to gain control over their actions, decisions and choices. The Mend House allows men to enjoy clean, sober and stable housing for up to 2 years while…
To provide employement opportunities to mentally or physically disabled individuals.
Half way house for diagnostic evaluation, treatment, shelter, counseling, educational program, and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts.
Providing a half-way house for recovering substance abusers
Transitional shelter for women, men and children for central oregon. to provide shelter and a safe place for hope.
The gentry house, inc. is an emergency transitional homeless shelter to help families with children in the region of murray and calloway county, ky. residents are given rent and utility assistance.
Provide free services that include pregnancy testing & ultrasound readings and to educate and support women, who find themselves in "crisis" pregnancies, about the developing life inside them and to love them and their unborn child through…
Men & women shelter - provide housing overnight 7 days a week, serve 3 meals a day, provide clothing and personal hygiene items as needed
Provide Group and Foster care for Homeless Children and Counseling
We are a Christ-centered residential care facility for pregnant women in crisis. We offer a safe home that provides shelter, food, prenatal/postpartum care, spiritual, mental, financial, rides to medical appointments, educational and…
Hope ministries helps low income families in northern kentucky with emergency food assistance, clothing, household items, and used toys.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Good Shepherd Center and the most unlike its peers is Love Nancy 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 16 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 16% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 96 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 TENNESSEE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MCMINN CO EDUCATIONAL & COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIRACLE LAKE INC ↗
- Who funds ATHENS-MCMINN FAMILY YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GRACE AND MERCY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds STRAIGHTWAY MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds CASA MONROE INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD FAITH CLINIC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AT THE WELL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds COORDINATED CHARITIES OF ATHENS ↗
- Who funds MCMINN COUNTY EMERGENCY RESCUE SQUAD ↗
- Who funds TRI-COUNTY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MCMINN COUNTY SENIOR CITIZENS INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF BRADLEY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds The Trousdale School ↗
- Who funds ENGLEWOOD RURAL FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds ETOWAH RESCUE SQUAD ↗
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: George R Johnson Family Foundation · East Tennessee Foundation · Monroe County United Way Fund Inc · United Way of McMinn and Meigs Counties · Community Foundation of Cleveland and Bradley County · Variety of Eastern Tennessee · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Amazonsmile Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Athens Federal 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 Athens Federal Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Athens Federal 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.