· Private foundation
Henry Laird Smith 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k31 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $234k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $306k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SECOND HARVEST | $150,000 |
| THE LAND TRUST FOR TENNESSEE | $106,000 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER DEVELOPMENT | $50,000 |
| NASHVILLE TREE FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| HARPETH HALL SCHOOL | $26,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $21,000 |
| HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| THE WELCOME GARDEN | $18,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL | $17,500 |
| ST LUKE'S COMMUNITY HOUSE | $15,000 |
| ST GEORGE'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,000 |
| ST JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL | $10,000 |
| ALIVE HOSPICE | $10,000 |
| SILOAM FAMILY HEALTH CENTER | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $192k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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 +41% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
81 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 39 since wound down; 6 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $64k 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
- THTHE HARPETH HALL SCHOOL7× · 2017–2025 · $737k · revenue +141%
- SHSILOAM HEALTH7× · 2017–2025 · $420k · revenue +47%
- TLTHE LAND TRUST FOR TENNESSEE INC6× · 2020–2025 · $415k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- TLTHE LAND TRUST FOR TENNESone grant, 2017 · $50k
- NANASHVILLE ACADEMY THEATRE AND NASHVILLE CHILDREN'S THEATRE ASSOCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +26%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $10k
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.
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Founded in 1902, barton college is a four-year, private, liberal arts college located in wilson, n.c. the barton experience focuses on academic excellence within a wide range of professional and liberal arts programs leading to…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
Greenways for nashville promotes, supports, and enhances a system of greenways and open space in nashville and davidson county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Centennial Park Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is Heritage Plantation Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 43 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
81 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. 81 of the 137 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 HARPETH HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SILOAM HEALTH ↗
- Who funds THE LAND TRUST FOR TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds EQUAL CHANCE FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds CUMBERLAND RIVER COMPACT INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE TREE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF WILLIAMSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE PUBLIC TELEVISION INC ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA 560 MIDDLE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WESTCHESTER AND PUTNAM ↗
- Who funds LEXARTS INC ↗
- Who funds MEHARRY MEDICAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CITIZENS INC ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE PLANTATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEXINGTON SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE WELCOME GARDEN ↗
- Who funds HIGH LINE CANAL CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WARNER PARKS INC ↗
- Who funds BATTLE GROUND ACADEMY ↗
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: The Wade-Buntin Family Foundation · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Msb Cockayne Fund Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · T & T Family Foundation · The Blum Family Foundation · 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 Henry Laird Smith 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
- Florence Griswold Museum Inc — 2% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Henry Laird Smith Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Henry Laird Smith 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.