· Private foundation
Gause Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k74 grants · $102k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $21k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| St George Episcopal Church | $20,500 |
| Nashville Opera | $6,000 |
| Nashville Symphony | $5,000 |
| St Marys Episcopal Cathedral | $5,000 |
| Crossroads Campus | $5,000 |
| Vanderbilt University | $2,500 |
| Candler School of Theology | $2,500 |
| Morris Brown College | $2,500 |
| Morehouse College | $2,500 |
| Clark Atanta University | $2,500 |
| University of North Carolina1 | $2,500 |
| Chattahoochee Riverkeeper | $2,500 |
| Spelman College | $2,500 |
| FRIENDS OF MACC | $2,000 |
| Wags and Walks of Nashville | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +27% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
101 repeat relationships — 64 still active in FY2025, 37 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k 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
- TCTHE CROSSROADS CAMPUS6× · 2020–2025 · $26k · revenue +27%
- GPGROVE PARK FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2022 · $16k · revenue +67%
- OMOPERA MEMPHIS INC3× · 2020–2022 · $15k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- SCSTAR C CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +102%
- COCathedral of St Philipsone grant, 2020 · $7k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $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.
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.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Lead public schools exists to prepare all our students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and in life.
The organization's primary mission is conserving land where people and nature can thrive by creating green corridors linking existing public lands using conservation easments and outright purchase.
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,…
University school of nashville models the best educational practices. in an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of metropolian nashville. usn fosters each student's intellectual, artistic, and athletic…
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 cares exists to end the hiv epidemic, promote comprehensive sexual health and end sexual health stigmatization and discrimination through prevention, education, treatment, support, advocacy, and strategic partnership.
Greenways for nashville promotes, supports, and enhances a system of greenways and open space in nashville and davidson county.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Rescue Mission and the most unlike its peers is Safe Entry 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 35 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
87 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. 87 of the 162 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 CROSSROADS CAMPUS ↗
- Who funds GROVE PARK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OPERA MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE FOOD PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds STAR C CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONS MINISTRY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds MUSIC HEALTH ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds Spelman College ↗
- Who funds Clark Atlanta University Inc ↗
- Who funds CITY OF REFUGE ↗
- Who funds DOLPHIN AQUATICS DBA NASHVILLE DOLPHINS ↗
- Who funds THISTLE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds MORRIS BROWN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE HUMANE ASSOCIATION AKA NASHVILLE HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds A STEP AHEAD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PRESTON TAYLOR MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE PEER POWER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WARNER PARKS INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE SAFE HAVEN FAMILY SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds RENEWAL HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Washington and Lee University ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP TRUST 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 · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Healing Trust Formerly Baptist Healing Hospital Trust · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · Nashville Predators Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Louie M & Betty M Phillips Foundatn
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 Gause 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.
- Epilepsy Foundation of America — 22% 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.