· Public charity
Community Shares Inc
Community shares mission is supporting tennessee social change organizations in order to promote a more just and caring community.
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 · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $228k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $40,733 |
| Individual grant recipient | $39,383 |
| ORAU | $33,106 |
| Individual grant recipient | $27,816 |
| MECC | $27,205 |
| TECC | $24,860 |
| METRO SCHOOLS | $18,064 |
| MTSU | $16,334 |
| Individual grant recipient | $8,860 |
| NES | $6,162 |
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 (FY17–18, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against -19% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down; 10 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $243k 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
- HSHUMANE SOCIETY OF THE TENNESSEE VALLEY INC6× · 2017–2023 · $181k · revenue +60%
- INIJAMS NATURE CENTER INC5× · 2017–2022 · $59k · revenue +112%
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD GREATER MEMPHIS REGION INC2× · 2022–2023 · $57k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- DUDRUMS UP GUNS DOone grant, 2023 · $57k
- NSNEXT STEP INITIAone grant, 2022 · $7k
- THTN HEALTHCARE CAMPAIGNone grant, 2019 · $6k
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 organization wishes to encourage and protect informed individual choice regarding reproductive health care.
Social Welfare
The Tennessee Democracy Network is a nonprofit civic incubator for relational organizing and civic literacy initiatives that develop and deepen cultures of nonpartisan democratic engagement in Tennessee.
Our mission is to increase the access and quality of social service resources through bettering norms and culture with advocacy, performance improvement strategies, and technology.
To identify, prevent, and remedy water pollution statewide through a network of allies and resources.
we exist to spay and neuter unwanted pets in our local area trying to find them a home to thrive in until the end of their time
To create a sustainable green economy that benefits all
Education
To support education, health and access programs that preserve, protect, and enhance Tennessee's natural areas and parks system.
The tennessee justice center (tjc) advocates on behalf of low-income tennesseans in areas of public policy having the greatest impact on their health and welfare.
The Tennessee Public Safety Network was established to address the growing stress and trauma experienced by law enforcement and public safety personnel. We believe untreated stress profoundly impacts their physical and emotional well-being.
Civictn and its partners are working individually and collectively to create a more accessible, inclusive, and representative democracy by lifting up the voices of the disenfranchised, restoring the power and accessibility of the vote, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nami Tennessee and the most unlike its peers is Build for Bees. 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 38 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 38 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 PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF MIDDLE & EAST TENNESSE INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE TENNESSEE VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds IJAMS NATURE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD GREATER MEMPHIS REGION INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK CHILDRENS INSTITUTE OF TENN ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE COALITION TO END DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE CITIZENS FOR WILDERNESS PLANNING ↗
- Who funds NAMI TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds JUBILEE COMMUNITY ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS COALITION ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEANS FOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY ↗
- Who funds Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NURTURE THE NEXT FKA PREVENT CHILD ABUSE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds BUILD FOR BEES ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE HEALTH CARE CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SHARES USA ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S INTERNATIONAL SUMMER VILLAGES - SMOKY MOUNTAIN CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE PEACE AND JUSTICE CENTER ↗
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 Frist Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Healing Trust Formerly Baptist Healing Hospital Trust · Memorial Foundation Inc · East Tennessee Foundation · Hca Healthcare Foundation · Network for Good · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Community Shares Inc 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 Community Shares Inc?
Find your warmest path to Community Shares Inc 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.