· Private foundation
Margaret Chesley Memorial Fund
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k26 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BELLVILLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $5,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,500 |
| LATIUM-WESLEY-GREENVINE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $3,000 |
| ST MARYS EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $3,000 |
| FAITH ACADEMY MARBLE FALLS | $2,540 |
| FRIENDS OF SAN FELIPE HISTORIC SITE | $2,500 |
| BELLVILLE LIONS-CONCORDIA INC | $2,000 |
| SEALY PREGNACY RESOURCE CENTER | $2,000 |
| BELLVILLE HISTORIC SOCIETY | $2,000 |
| RAISING ACADEMIC PROFORMANCE | $2,000 |
| SEALY CHRISTIAN FOOD PANTRY | $2,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $2,000 |
| BLUEBONNET SOCIETY | $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 (FY19–24, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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.
49 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 3 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- BVBELLVILLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT8× · 2017–2024 · $46k · revenue +28%
- FFFUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA AND ITS 42117 BELLVILLE FFA ALUMNI8× · 2017–2024 · $15k · revenue +24%
- LWLATIUM WESLEY GREENVINE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC7× · 2018–2024 · $12k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- TPTURNVEREIN PROJECT - BELLVILLEone grant, 2018 · $3k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $2k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $2k
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.
Provide firefighting services for frelsburg, texas area.
Provides fire protection and response and first responder services for medical emergencies to carmine, texas and surrounding areas
Provides protection, preservation, and well-being of the health, safety, and property of persons residing in the rural areas of kaufman county, tx .
Fire prevention, fire supression and rescue in florence texas and the williamson county emergency services district 7 area.
Multi texas county volunteer fire & ambulance services
None
To provide fire protection for little texas commuity of macon county, alabama.
Volunteer fire department
Provide fire fighting & ambulance service to hankamer, texas and surrounding areas.
Fire and rescue services for the community of hitchcock, texas.
Provide fire suppression and first responder services to the Boerne, Tx area as well as provide support to the Boerne Fire Department.
To provide fire suppression, fire investigation, and search and rescue services to the citizens of clyde and the surrounding rural areas of callahan co., tx.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Latium Wesley Greenvine Volunteer Fire Department Inc and the most unlike its peers is Texas Christian University. 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 27 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 18% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 76 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 BELLVILLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds BELLVILLE HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA AND ITS 42117 BELLVILLE FFA ALUMNI ↗
- Who funds LATIUM WESLEY GREENVINE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds BELLVILLE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAT SPRING VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMEN ↗
- Who funds RAISING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE ↗
- Who funds CASA For Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HOA INCORPORATED OF AUSTIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds Sealy Christian Pantry Inc ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds SEALY PREGNANCY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RENEWAL TEAM INC ↗
- Who funds CAMERON KIECKE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
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: Will and Bailee Byler Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Margaret Chesley Memorial Fund 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.
- Community Renewal Team Inc — 77% 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 Margaret Chesley Memorial Fund?
Find your warmest path to Margaret Chesley Memorial Fund 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.