· Private foundation
Don & Barbara Thornton 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 68% of DON & BARBARA THORNTON FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY TULSA AREA COMMAND | $5,000 |
| TULSA BOYS HOME | $5,000 |
| FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICES | $5,000 |
| CMC CHARITIES | $5,000 |
| DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INTERVENTION SERVICES | $2,500 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF TULSA INC | $2,500 |
| RESONANCE | $2,500 |
| HOSPITALITY HOUSE | $2,500 |
| LITTLE LIGHT HOUSE | $2,086 |
| TULSA AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM | $1,500 |
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, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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.
27 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 2 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, 64% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
The Town & Country School Inc6× · 2018–2023 · $37k · revenue +37%
TULSA DAY CENTER INC3× · 2021–2023 · $30k · revenue +33%- DVDOMESTIC VIOLENCE INTERVENTION SERVICES6× · 2017–2024 · $18k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- 1I111Project Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue +261%
RESTORE HOPE MINISTRIES INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +180%- ACASBURY CHURCH RESERVE TRUSTone grant, 2022 · $5k
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.
111Tulsa exists to mobilize the local church to see that no child is without a family in Tulsa County.
Our mission is to lead our community by serving people experiencing or at risk of homelessness with help, hope, and healing, in the spirit of excellence, under the call of christ.
Family Hope House empowers families through therapy, education, and advocacy. As Oklahoma's sole adoption competent mental health agency, we support foster and adoptive children for lasting stability and success.
The family safety center exists to promote safety and justice in tulsa county through co-located multi-disciplinary services that offer protection, hope and healing to victims of intimate partner and family violence, sexual assault,…
Tulsa casa is organized to speak for the best interests of abused and neglected children in court. we promote and support volunteer representation for the children in an effort to provide each child a safe, permanent, nurturing home.
Our mission is to eliminate family violence, stalking, child abuse, and sexual assault through advocacy, education, counseling, support and prevention services.
To assure the safety and well-being of children and to create heathly families by providing: assessment and intervention services; a temporary home for children at risk of abuse, neglect, or homelessness; education, prevention and advocacy…
Through shelter and housing, advocacy and supportive services, our mission is to prevent and end homelessness in our community.
Covenant house georgia provides shelters, protects and advocates on behalf of homeless, trafficked, runaway and sexually exploited youth.
The family crisis center provides intervention and advocacy for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. this is done with counselors, court advocates and 24 hour shelter for victims and their children.
Our mission is rooted in the belief that meaningful relationships restore communities. through relational service and dignified housing solutions, we work to help people move from surviving to thriving.
Create a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring through strong public/private partnerships, using data to guide our strategy, and educate the public on homelessness and its solutions.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mental Health Association in Tulsa Inc dba Mental Health Association Oklahoma and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 45 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 15% 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 57 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 The Town & Country School Inc ↗
- Who funds TULSA DAY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INTERVENTION SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Mental Health Association in Tulsa Inc dba Mental Health Association Oklahoma ↗
- Who funds TULSA BOYS' HOME INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE LIGHT HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds 111Project Inc ↗
- Who funds Family & Childrens Services Inc ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF OKLAHOMA CITY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF EASTERN OKLAHOMA INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORE HOPE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds TULSA AIR & SPACE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds STREET SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE PARENT CHILD CTR OF TULSA INC ↗
- Who funds Resonance Center for Women Inc ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tulsa ↗
- Who funds Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa Inc ↗
- Who funds TULSA DREAM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE SPRING SHELTER 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 Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation · Tulsa Community Foundation · Sanford P & Irene F Burnstein Foundation Irene F Burnstein Co-Trustee · Mervin Bovaird Foundation · The Gelvin Foundation · The Sharna and Irvin Frank Foundation · Morningcrest Healthcare Foundation · Hille Family Charitable Foundation · Grace & Franklin Bernsen Foundation · The Hardesty Family Foundation Inc · Sarkeys Foundation · George Kaiser Family 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 Don & Barbara Thornton 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.
- Domestic Violence Intervention Services — 15% of income from government
- Tulsa Day Center Inc — 9% of income from government
- Mental Health Association in Tulsa Inc dba Mental Health Association Oklahoma — 8% of income from government
- Family & Childrens Services Inc — 1% of income from government
- Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Don & Barbara Thornton Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Don & Barbara Thornton Family 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.