How much does Gause Foundation give?

Gause Foundation reported 75 grants totaling $122,550 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 76 and 83 organizations a year over FY2020 to FY2024.

What does Gause Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2020 to FY2025, its largest causes are Religion (30%), Education (15%), Housing & Shelter (10%).

Who are Gause Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2020 to FY2025: St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral ($114k), The Crossroads Campus ($26k), Grove Park Foundation Inc ($16k).

Does Gause Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 18% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Gause Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Gause Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Memorial Foundation Inc, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc, Hca Healthcare Foundation.

Where is Gause Foundation based?

Gause Foundation is based in TN.

Gause Foundation

Gause Foundation at a glance

· 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.

$123k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$21k

Largest

01What it funds

0195% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Religion$202kEducation$102kHousing & Shelter$65kArts & Culture$63kHuman Services$31kHealth$30kAnimals$28kFood & Nutrition$27kOther$0

02FY2025 · 75 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k74 grants · $102k
$10k–50k1 grant · $21k

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$406k

Total assets

Largest grants
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
University of North Carolina1	$2,500
Morehouse College	$2,500
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper	$2,500
Vanderbilt University	$2,500
Candler School of Theology	$2,500
Clark Atanta University	$2,500
Spelman College	$2,500
Morris Brown College	$2,500
Pet Community Center	$2,000
Wags and Walks of Nashville	$2,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

91%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$604k · 101 repeat orgs$60k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +27% since the first grant, against +11% for those 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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

101

Total granted

$604k

$51k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+27%

+11%

Still filing today

56%

43%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationArts & CultureHuman ServicesHealthRecreation & SportsAnimalsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

TC
THE CROSSROADS CAMPUS
6× · 2020–2025 · $26k · revenue +27%
GP
GROVE PARK FOUNDATION INC
3× · 2020–2022 · $16k · revenue +67%
OM
OPERA MEMPHIS INC
3× · 2020–2022 · $15k · revenue +31%

Funded once

SC
STAR C CORPORATIONgraduated
one grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +102%
CO
Cathedral of St Philips
one grant, 2020 · $7k
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2021 · $5k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Nashville Public Radio

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 & Culture

Furman University

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.

Education

Lead Public Schools Inc

Lead public schools exists to prepare all our students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and in life.

Education

Tenngreen Land Conservancy

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.

Recreation & Sports

Tennessee Performing Arts Center (Tpac) Management Corporation

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,…

Arts & Culture

University School of Nashville

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…

Education

Methodist Medical Center

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.

Health

Nashville Cares

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.

Health

Greenways for Nashville Inc

Greenways for nashville promotes, supports, and enhances a system of greenways and open space in nashville and davidson county.

Recreation & Sports

Columbia College

Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.

Education

Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Inc

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…

Community Improvement

The Land Trust for Tennessee Inc

To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Rescue Mission; 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.

04the grantee network

87 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

85/87

Grantees still filing

55/87

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$424,040Education$76,600Arts & Culture$54,935Human Services$46,700Community Improvement$28,000Health$19,900Religion$19,600

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Memorial Foundation IncTN43.7× affinity19 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Gause Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Gause Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

31report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Gause’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home