· Private foundation
Cowin Special Account
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MITCHELLS PLACE | $40,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH | $10,000 |
| TUM TUM TREE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY IN AL | $5,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $1,500 |
| REED FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| WISE4AL | $1,000 |
| UNLESS U | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM OF ART | $400 |
| MAGIC MOMENTS | $300 |
| JIMMY HALE MISSION | $250 |
| BIRMINGHAM CHILDREN'S THEATRE | $250 |
| ALABAMA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $250 |
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 (FY20–25, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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 +40% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 5 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- MPMITCHELL'S PLACE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $200k · revenue +60%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH3× · 2023–2025 · $30k · revenue +40%
- TATHE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND4× · 2021–2024 · $20k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- NCNATURE CONSERVANCY OF ALone grant, 2023 · $10k
- UDUAB- DIABETES RESEARCH FUNDone grant, 2022 · $5k
- AHAmerican Heart Association Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +25%
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 mission of the Arc of Tuscaloosa County is to provide activities to persons residing in Tuscaloosa County who have developmental or intellectual disabilities, which enable the individual to maintain previously acquired skills/behaviors…
To support individuals with autism and their caregivers through scientifically and socially validated practices based on the principles of applied behavior analysis. our goal is to create a community of comprehensive resources that…
To work in partnership with families and organizations to ensure that all alabama children (birth to five) get everything they need to develop to their fullest potential.
The mission of Children's of Alabama is to provide the finest pediatric health services to all children in an environment that fosters excellence in research and medical education. Children's will be an advocate for all children and work…
Our mission is to speak for the well-being of Alabama's children through research, public awareness, and advocacy.
Serving people with intellectual and/or other developmental disabilities and their families.
To improve services for persons with autism spectrum disorders and their families through education and advocacy.
To maintain and operate a combined treatment and educational institution for the purpose of treating, educating and housing children, adolescents and adults who are emotionally disturbed, mentally ill and those diagnosed with autism in…
To provide cost-effective residential, social, intellectual, physical and vocational services to individuals with autism in group homes and in home support.
Encourage and enhance advocacy and family support services on behalf of individuals suffering from mental illness.
To improve the lives of children and families by providing a continuum of compassionate, measurable, and effective behavioral health, education, and social services.
To educate, empower, and improve services for mental health consumers in the state of alabama.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Bell Center for Early Intervention Programs and the most unlike its peers is Feeding America. 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 36 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 12% 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.
22 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. 22 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 MITCHELL'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds TUM TUM TREE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STUDIO BY THE TRACKS INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds PRESCHOOL PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds FIRST LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds UNLESS U INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE RED BARN ↗
- Who funds REED FOUNDATION FOR AUTISM INC ↗
- Who funds MAGIC MOMENTS ↗
- Who funds THE BELL CENTER FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMS ↗
- Who funds SMILE-A-MILE ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON ASSOCIATION OF ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM CHILDREN'S THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds SPACE ONE ELEVEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE GREATER BIRMINGHAM HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds Bridgeways Inc ↗
- Who funds Kings Home 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 Greater Birmingham · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Protective Life Foundation · The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · The Hackney Foundation · Debardeleben Foundation Inc · Altecstyslinger Foundation · Junior League of Birmingham 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 Cowin Special Account 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.