· Private foundation
Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k257 grants · $618k
- $10k–50k59 grants · $918k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NASHVILLE ZOO AT GRASSMERE | $200,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $186,500 |
| UPWARD INTUITION INC | $110,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER NASHVILLE | $70,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $60,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $60,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $60,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $59,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $59,000 |
| NACOME | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| HOPE THROUGH HEALING HANDS | $50,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $50,000 |
| ABE'S GARDEN | $50,000 |
| WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $48,000 |
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, $847k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 79% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist 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. Read by recipient address, 92% of the giving stays in TN; read by stated purpose it is 82% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
254 repeat relationships — 195 still active in FY2024, 59 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $111k 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
- NZNASHVILLE ZOO INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +23%
- TETHE ENSWORTH SCHOOL8× · 2017–2024 · $916k · revenue +47%
- UWUNITED WAY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $766k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- MNMETROPOLITAN NASHVILLE BOARD OF PARKS & RECREATIONone grant, 2019 · $398k
- LILOVE IS A GIFT INCORPORATED CO O'NEIL HAGAMAN LLCone grant, 2020 · $100k
- RHRESTORING HOPE CHURCH INCone grant, 2019 · $60k
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.
To maintain high standards for nursing homes in the state of tennessee and to seek the solutions to problems common to members of the association.
Nashville banner is a locally owned, community supported, civic news organization. we exist to empower the people of nashville to make informed decisions by providing non-partisan journalism from an independent, nonprofit newsroom. we are…
The mission of tccn is to support, educate, and represent non-profit organizations that provide charitable healthcare services to low-income, uninsured, and underserved tennesseans. tccn envisions a strong, compassionate healthcare safety…
Leadership tennessee fosters collaborative, non-partisan dialogue on issues of state importance, by connecting and deploying a network of diverse leaders and engaged citizens.
Our mission is to serve our members through education, professionalism, and legislative involvement
To foster a sustainable network of community health workers and to train frontline public health professionals who possess a deep understanding of and strong ties to the local community.
Cumberland 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 the patient's ability to pay.
To reduce homelessness and improve family stability by increasing housing resources, administration of hud-mckinney vento funds, and support services through collaborative efforts with partner organizations, when available.
To identify, prevent, and remedy water pollution statewide through a network of allies and resources.
Ntc mission is to advance the diverse technology ecosystem by connecting and promoting members, attracting, growing and retaining tech talent, and providing opportunities to reinvest in the greater nashville community.
New level community development corporation advocates for low-to-moderate income community by working with legislators, other non-profits, and private developers to create more affordable homes in nashville.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Rescue Mission and the most unlike its peers is Craig County Rescue Squad- Ems Inc. 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 30 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
237 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. 237 of the 333 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds THE ENSWORTH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds ABE'S GARDEN ↗
- Who funds UPWARD INTUITION INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE THROUGH HEALING HANDS ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOVE IS A GIFT INC ↗
- Who funds LOVE FROM MUSIC CITY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLEHEALTH ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds HARDING ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SILOAM HEALTH ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Middle Tennessee (6273) ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF MIDDLE TN INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH FAMILY MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Lwala Community Alliance ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF WILLIAMSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds SCORE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds HOLLINS UNIVERSITY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds DAYSTAR COUNSELING MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEXT DOOR 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: Memorial Foundation Inc · The Frist Foundation · Hca Healthcare Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Joe C Davis Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Healing Trust Formerly Baptist Healing Hospital Trust · Nashville Predators Foundation · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Louie M & Betty M Phillips Foundatn · Carolyn Smith Foundation · Dettwiller 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 Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- The Children's Home Society of Florida — 6% 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.
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How do I get to Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist 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.