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Texas · Private foundation

Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund

Its FY2022 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$1.5M
Granted FY2022
9
Grants FY2022
8
Organizations funded FY2022
13%
First-time grantees FY2022
Read the full brief

Read this first · the figures below need context

99% of Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund’s FY2022 grant dollars went to Arkansas Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.

Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2022 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.

Organizations named directly on the return

1
’17
3
’18
4
’19
4
’20
3
’21
2
’22

Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.

Median grant, FY2022
$2,200
Largest grant, FY2022
$1,489,940
Organizations funded a year
1 to 14
FY2017 to FY2022
States reached, FY2022
1
Applications
Preselected organizations only
Per its most recent filing; check its own site

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2022, 13% of the organizations Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund funded were first-time grantees, receiving 14% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’18’19’20’21’22
EducationOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20228$16k13%
FY20218$26k0%
FY202012$53k17%
FY201914$63k29%
FY201811$32k100%
FY20171$55kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2022.

Philanthropy$1.5MEducation$245k

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2022, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Fordyce Scholarship Association$55,3411n/a
University of Arkansas at Monticello$31,8263n/a
Ouachita Baptist University$11,70150%
Arkansas State University$8,8015n/a
Henderson State University$1,8643n/a

Plus 14 recipients with no EIN on record ($136k), not named here.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

James H McKenzie Charitable FoundationAR13.6× affinity4 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: James H McKenzie Charitable Foundation · Windgate Charitable Foundation Inc · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Arkansas Community Foundation Inc

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Compare Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund with peer funders

About Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund

How much does Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund give?
Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund reported 9 grants totaling $1,505,896 in its FY2022 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 14 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2022.
What does Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2022, its largest causes are Philanthropy (86%), Education (14%).
Who are Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2022: Fordyce Scholarship Association ($55k), University of Arkansas at Monticello ($32k), Ouachita Baptist University ($12k).
Does Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund fund new organizations?
In FY2022, 13% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Does Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund accept unsolicited applications?
Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Which funders back the same organizations as Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include James H McKenzie Charitable Foundation, Windgate Charitable Foundation Inc, National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Where is Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund based?
Bess Wilkins Memorial Scholarship Fund is based in TX.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 20 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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