· Public charity
Blackberry Farm Foundation
The BLACKBERRY FARM FOUNDATION is proud to support charitable causes related to children and foodways, with special emphasis on those located in the east tennessee area, the special place that is our home.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $78k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $274k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CROSSROADS CAMPUS | $140,402 |
| THE BUSYHEAD PROJECT | $83,581 |
| PELLISSIPPI STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF TENNESSEE VALLEY | $30,000 |
| SPECIAL OPPS INC | $27,715 |
| AMERICANA MUSIC FOUNDATION | $10,148 |
| YMCA KNOXVILLE & TENNESSEE VALLEY | $10,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $274k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 4 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, 31% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $244k 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
- BCBLOUNT COUNTY CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER INC5× · 2019–2023 · $210k · revenue +18%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TENNESSEE VALL6× · 2019–2024 · $105k · revenue +23%
- SOSpecial Opps Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $92k · revenue +259%
Funded once
- CECARPENTERS ELEMENTARY FRIENDS PROGRAMone grant, 2019 · $40k
- SHSecond Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $36k · revenue +29%
- BEBRETT ELDREDGE FAMILY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $22k · revenue -99%
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.
Brooklyn Heights Community Garden cultivates healthy community through growing food, intergenerational learning and creative play.
To cultivate healthy communities by supporting relationships between local farmers, producers, and the public.
Match mentoring volunteers with children in need to build and foster relationships.
BMCF is commited to improving the lives of persons with specialized intellectual developmental disorders and persons with specialized dementia served by Black Mountain Neuro-Medical Treatment Center. We foster a culture of inclusion and…
To create communities of health through fresh food. Brighter Bites seeks to improve health outcomes among children and families in under-resourced communities by using data-driven, evidence-based strategies for providing fresh produce and…
To build bridges to brighter futures for teenagers who have big aspirations but face barriers to achieving their full potential. provides financial benefits to teenagers based on applications demonstrating need and a worthy activity that…
We nourish the bodies, minds, and hearts of those facing cancer through the power of healthy meals and nutrition education.
Kids In Nutrition (KIN) is a nationwide student-led movement dedicated to food justice, sustainable systems, and improved health outcomes for youth through food literacy and access. Recognizing that lifelong habits develop early, KIN…
Walk/bike nashville is working to build a more walkable, bikeable, and livable nashville.
Brandworkers is a non-profit organization of local food-making workers coming together for a good job and sustainable food system.
Reduce health disparities throughout the United States by enhancing the health and well-being of minority and marginalized populations through leadership collaboration with the public and with community healthcare practices.
Create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth. the organization's vision is that all youth achieve their full potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hand in Hand and the most unlike its peers is Brett Eldredge Family Foundation. 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 23 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 10% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 29 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 BLOUNT COUNTY CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE CROSSROADS CAMPUS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TENNESSEE VALL ↗
- Who funds Special Opps Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BUSYHEAD PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina Inc ↗
- Who funds HARMONY FAMILY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BRETT ELDREDGE FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Best Buddies International Inc ↗
- Who funds KREMPELS BRAIN INJURY CENTER ↗
- Who funds USA CYCLING DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICANA MUSIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Middle Tennessee (6273) ↗
- Who funds Operation Walk International ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM BLOUNT HIGH SCHOOL BAND BOOSTERS INC ↗
- Who funds Turning Green ↗
- Who funds Bellas Mentoring Inc ↗
- Who funds HUGS FOR US INC ↗
- Who funds RETHINK FOOD NYC INC ↗
- Who funds KELLER RESTAURANT RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds HAND IN HAND ↗
- Who funds SIXTEEN THIRTY FUND ↗
- Who funds The Martin Luther King Jr Center For Nonviolent Social Change 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: Haslam Family Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Variety of Eastern Tennessee · East Tennessee Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Blackberry Farm 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
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.