· Private foundation
Donna and Dave Nelson 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 $10k4 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $91k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST PAUL THE APOSTLE CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| SAINT LOUIS CATHOLIC CHURCH | $22,500 |
| PAGE-ROBBINS ADULT DAY SERVICES INC | $16,000 |
| COLLIERVILLE PARTNERS IN EDUCATION | $15,000 |
| CHRISTIAN BROTHERS LA SALLE HIGH SCHOOL | $12,500 |
| AVE MARIA HOME | $5,000 |
| COLLIERVILLE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC | $2,500 |
| ST AGNES ACADEMY - ST DOMINIC SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| JUNIOR LEAGUE OF MEMPHIS INC | $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 (FY20–24, $112k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 19%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Donna and Dave Nelson Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +7% since the first grant, against -14% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 4 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- PRPAGE ROBBINS ADULT DAY SERVICES INC5× · 2020–2024 · $76k · revenue +46%
- CECOLLIERVILLE EDUCATION FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $10k · revenue +189%
- YOYMCA OF MEMPHIS & THE MID-SOUTH3× · 2020–2022 · $5k · revenue +7%
Funded once
- LBLE BONHEUR CLUB INCone grant, 2022 · $500 · revenue -14%
- RRRESOURCE REDISTRIBUTION MINISTRYone grant, 2020 · $500 · revenue -55%
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.
Reach memphis helps high achieving students from shelby county public schools succeed in high school, college and beyond using a continuum of services including summer educational experiences, college readiness planning and counseling, and…
To prepare young ladies and gentlemen for college success within a highly-structured, nurturing, christian environment.
To partner with families in providing students a christ-centered and academically challenging education equipping them with a biblical worldview as they grow in understandings, attitudes, skills, and in favor with god and man.
To surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.
Crossroads Christian Academy partners with parents to provide a Christ-Centered, college preparatory education where students are allowed to further develop their God-given talents and virtues and become college-worthy character witnesses…
The organizations mission is to promote and maintain a business climate favorable to businesses in tennessee.
Tennessee educational cooperative's mission is to help all children reach their potential by partnering with parents, schools and communities.
To advance state policies and practices that ensure all tennessee children from birth through 3rd grade get the high quality early education they need to power our state's future.
To provide students in grades 6-12 with an excellent education, preparing them to pursue ambitious goals and succeed in college.
Elementary and high school education
The organization's mission is to develop, acquire, construct and maintain buildings and property for providing a quality assisted living/alzheimer care facility containing facilities for recreation, instruction, education and administer to…
To serve our members and partners by improving the quality of life through regional economic prosperity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rise Memphis Inc and the most unlike its peers is Junior League of Memphis. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 15 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 CHRISTIAN BROTHERS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PAGE ROBBINS ADULT DAY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds COLLIERVILLE PARTNERS IN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds AVE MARIA HOME INC ↗
- Who funds COLLIERVILLE EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF MEMPHIS & THE MID-SOUTH ↗
- Who funds RISE MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds LE BONHEUR CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Junior League of Memphis ↗
- Who funds RESOURCE REDISTRIBUTION MINISTRY ↗
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: Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Christoval Foundation · Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Crews Family Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Donna and Dave Nelson 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.
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.