· Private foundation
Footprint Foundation Inc
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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k25 grants · $66k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $407k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $609k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEACH FOR AMERICA INC | $125,000 |
| ARTSBUILD | $111,000 |
| EAST BAY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| THE URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA INC | $100,000 |
| OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE LAND TRUST INC | $100,000 |
| CHATTANOOGANS IN ACTION FOR LOVE EQUALITY AND BENE | $72,825 |
| ELLA LIBRARY | $38,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCORPORATED | $25,000 |
| NORTH CAROLINA ARTS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| SOUTHERN SMOKE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| BELOVED ASHEVILLE | $25,000 |
| CONTEMPORARY PERFORMING ARTS OF CHATTANOOGA INC | $21,950 |
| RISE CHATTANOOGA | $21,825 |
| PURPOSE POINT COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER INC | $20,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA NEIGHBORHOODS ARTS PARTNERSHIP | $20,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $156k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 23% of Footprint Foundation Inc’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, 74% of the giving stays in TN; read by stated purpose it is 83% — more 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 +48% for the ones you funded once.
47 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 13 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $124k 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
- AARTSBUILD5× · 2020–2024 · $504k · revenue +166% · 96% of their budget
- LILAUNCH INC5× · 2019–2023 · $490k · revenue +13%
- ULURBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA4× · 2021–2024 · $420k · revenue +60%
Funded once
BOSTON IMPACT INITIATIVE FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +71%- CFCHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVALone grant, 2019 · $30k
- CFCamellia Foundation Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +48%
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.
Our mission is to connect chattanooga's technology sector to drive regional economic growth.
Invest chattanooga uses flexible, low-cost capital and strategic public-private partnerships to produce financially sustainable, mixed-income housing with deep permanent affordability that the market alone cannot deliver.
Encourage economic development
To protect the architectural heritage of chattanooga through historic preservation, advocacy, and education
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
The mission of chattacademy is to reimagine what public education can look like in chattanooga, tennessee. chattacademy's mission is to graduate bilingual, biliterate critical thinkers ready to make an impact on the world through top…
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.
Arts & business council of greater nashville supports and promotes the arts by driving collaboration between arts and business that contribute to the creativity, vitality, and prosperity of greater nashville/the regions/the city.
To advocate for people who are homless or near homeless, strategically planning for housing and services in the community, maximizing resources and collaboarating with community partners to implement housing and services within the…
Creative works is organized to accelerate cultural and economic change by focusing on connecting, inspiring and educating the memphis creative community.
To provide facilities, services, and programs of the highest quality for the greatest benefit of the people, institutions, and communities of the state, and to take a leadership role in fostering the performing arts, arts education,…
Klru is a leader in public media, distinguished by its energetic engagement with the community and for the quality and creativity of content. klru illuminates the wider world of knowledge; the importance of discourse; and the many…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc and the most unlike its peers is Unified. 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 21 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
76 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. 76 of the 93 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 Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds HUMBOLDT AREA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARTSBUILD ↗
- Who funds LAUNCH INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA NEIGHBORHOOD ENTERPRISE ↗
- Who funds RISE CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST COMMUNITY CAPITAL CORPORATION D/B/A PATHWAY LENDING ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGANS IN ACTION FOR LOVE EQUALITY AND BENEVOLENCE ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA DESIGN STUDIO ↗
- Who funds PURPOSE POINT COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE POP-UP PROJECT ↗
- Who funds GREENSPACES INC ↗
- Who funds Glass House Collective ↗
- Who funds LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF METROPOLITAN CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDICOS MISSION FUND ↗
- Who funds Unified ↗
- Who funds LA PAZ DE DIOS INC ↗
- Who funds CRABTREE FARMS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds CONTEMPORARY PERFORMING ARTS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds THE TENNESSEE RIVER GORGE TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds ELLA LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGAHAMILTON COUNTY PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds THE CHATTERY ↗
- Who funds BOSTON IMPACT INITIATIVE FUND ↗
- Who funds Tennessee Aquarium ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds REFLECTION RIDING ARBORETUM AND NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE AIM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SPLASH ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR MINDFUL LIVING ↗
- Who funds Camellia Foundation 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: Robert F Stone Foundation AKA Bobby Stone Foundation · Benwood Foundation Inc · Lyndhurst Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc · Chattanooga Christian Community Foundation · The Howard Fund · The Maclellan Foundation Inc · Weldon F Osborne Foundation Inc · Tucker Foundation · The Hacker and Kitty Caldwell Family Foundation Inc · Robert L & Kathrina H Maclellan Founda Foundation · American Water Charitable Foundationinc
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 Footprint Foundation Inc 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Footprint Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Footprint Foundation Inc 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.