· Private foundation
Deborah D Tipton Charitable 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k37 grants · $138k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $146k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Robert Tipton Charitable Foundation | $200,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts | $25,000 |
| First Baptist Church - Pine Bluff AR | $20,000 |
| Theatre Memphis | $15,000 |
| Dixon Gallery and Gardens | $13,500 |
| In Touch Ministries | $12,500 |
| George Washington Foundation | $10,000 |
| Memphis University School | $10,000 |
| K-Love | $10,000 |
| Trinity Episcopal Church of Pine Bluff | $10,000 |
| National Museum of Women in the Arts | $10,000 |
| Vanderbilt University | $10,000 |
| Samaritan's Purse | $8,812 |
| American Express Foundation | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +46% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
82 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2024, 39 since wound down; 7 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; $20k 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
- PHPROJECT HEAL HELP TO EAT ACCEPT & LIVE4× · 2017–2022 · $174k · revenue +42%
- TMTHEATRE MEMPHIS7× · 2017–2024 · $103k · revenue +5%
- DGDixon Gallery and Gardens8× · 2017–2024 · $88k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIAone grant, 2017 · $125k
- TPTURNING POINT COUNSELING INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -34%
- AAARKANSAS ARTS CENTERone grant, 2019 · $8k
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.
Methodist Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
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.
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
Letourneau university is a comprehensive institution of christian higher education where educators engage learners to nurture christian virtue, to develop competency and ingenuity in their professional fields, to integrate faith and work,…
As a christian liberal arts university, milligan university seeks to honor god by educating men and women to be servant-leaders.
The texas medical association (tma), the nation's largest and one of the oldest state medical societies, represents over 59,000 physicians and medical students dedicated to enhancing the health of all texans. in collaboration with 110…
To build relationships with alumni and friends in order to secure private funds and other resources for the benefit of the university of southern mississippi (usm). the foundation receives, invests and distributes private gifts in support…
The witte museum inspires people to shape the future of texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture.
The foundation exists to cultivate and administer current and deferred gifts for the benefit of ms united methodist related institutions, agencies, local churches, and other ministries for charitable purposes and support and to educate…
Shaped by christian principles, mcmurry university challenges students to examine our complex world from multiple perspectives in preparation for lives of leadership, service and professional success.
Mississippi college is a private, co-educational, comprehensive university of liberal arts and sciences and professional studies dedicated to the pursuit of academic excellence. founded in 1826, mississippi college is the oldest…
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Le Bonheur Children's Hospital Foundation and the most unlike its peers is American Express 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 44 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 115 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 Robert E Tipton Jr Charitable Foundation ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HEAL HELP TO EAT ACCEPT & LIVE ↗
- Who funds THEATRE MEMPHIS ↗
- Who funds Dixon Gallery and Gardens ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds SWEET BRIAR INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds IN TOUCH MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN REINS CENTER FOR EQUINE THERAPY ↗
- Who funds PALMER HOME FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LE BONHEUR CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds MID-SOUTH PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HUTCHISON SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The Madeira School ↗
- Who funds RAZORBACK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Inc ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds Crystal Bridges-Museum of American Art Inc ↗
- Who funds TUCKER W HIPPS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
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: Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Thomas Garrott Foundation · The Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation · Plough Foundation · Lawrence Lewis Foundation · The Sims Family Charitable Trust 44-5001145 · Thomas W Briggs Foundation Inc · Belz Foundation · United Way of the Mid South · Jr Hyde III Family Foundation · Self 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 Deborah D Tipton Charitable 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.
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.
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Find your warmest path to Deborah D Tipton Charitable Foundation 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.