· Private foundation
Bradford 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k25 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $408k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $382k
- $250k+1 grant · $306k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY | $305,700 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| CHEEKWOOD | $131,950 |
| ST BONAVENTURE UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $42,000 |
| FRONTLINE POLICY COUNCIL | $40,000 |
| NASHVILLE SYMPHONY | $40,000 |
| FRIENDS OF WARNER PARK | $26,175 |
| UNITED WAY (DESIGNATION BELOW) 1000 EACH ORGANIZATION | $25,000 |
| TRINITY SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| BERKLEY INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| AUSTIN INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE | $20,000 |
| ALL SAINTS EPISCOPAL CHURCH LINVILLE | $19,000 |
| APHESIS HOUSE | $15,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $98k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 74% 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.
44 repeat relationships — 40 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 11 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, 96% 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
Vanderbilt University5× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +65%- CBCHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART5× · 2020–2024 · $711k · revenue +29%
- NSNashville Symphony Association4× · 2020–2024 · $84k · revenue +76%
Funded once
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LANDgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +56%- PSPORTRAIT SOCIETY OF AMERICA INCone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +3%
- CPCENTENNIAL PARK CONSERVANCYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $1k · revenue +37%
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.
Nashville public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Founded in 1902, barton college is a four-year, private, liberal arts college located in wilson, n.c. the barton experience focuses on academic excellence within a wide range of professional and liberal arts programs leading to…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
In fulfillment of our mission to inspire a culture of understanding and discovery of our natural world through conservation, innovation and leadership, our goal is to build a first class zoo for middle tennessee and to develop a facility…
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Centennial Park Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is Arborcrest Gardens. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 70 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 Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds ST BONAVENTURE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ALIVE HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds TRINITY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds FRONTLINE POLICY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds COLGATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds APHESIS HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Witherspoon Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE HUMANE ASSOCIATION AKA NASHVILLE HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LINVILLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SADDLE UP ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE PUBLIC TELEVISION 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: The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · Enchiridion Foundation · Dettwiller Foundation · Ebs Foundation · The Annette & Irwin Eskind Family Foundation · The Danner Foundation · The Wade-Buntin Family Foundation · Thomas & Mamie Houser Charitable 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 Bradford 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% 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.