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· Private foundation

Mary Elizabeth Franklin Family 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.

$34k
Granted FY2025still arriving
10
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What it funds
0188% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2023 to 2025.

Human Services$16kEducation$14kRecreation & Sports$10kArts & Culture$4kHealth$3kCivil Rights$500Religion$500Other$0
02FY2025 · 10 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k8 grants · $13k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
$2,500
Median grant
1
States reached
$3k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
CHRIST THE KING CATHOLIC CHURCH$10,495
MOTHER TO MOTHER$10,000
Individual grant recipient$3,900
SWAN BALL 2025$2,600
ALIVE HOSPICE$2,500
OAK HILL SCHOOL$2,500
YMCA$550
VOICES FOR A SAFER TENNESSEE$500
MONTEAGLE SUNDAY SCHOOL WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION$500
Individual grant recipient$250
02The need
03

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 (FY24–25, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 12%MOTHER TO MOTHER: $10k → 14%MOTHER TO MOTHER: $6k → 14%ALIVE HOSPICE: $3k → 14%0%20%40%50%more need →
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.
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.

64%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$31k · 5 repeat orgs$17k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +60% since the first grant, against +23% for those funded once.

5 repeat relationships: 4 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

5
6

Total granted

$31k
$17k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+60%
+23%

Still filing today

40%
33%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 49% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k went to new ones.

50%100%’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
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

  • MT
    MOTHER TO MOTHER INC
    2× · 2024–2025 · $16k · revenue 0%
  • SB
    SWAN BALL 2024
    2× · 2023–2024 · $7k
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    2× · 2023–2025 · $4k

Funded once

  • CT
    CHRIST THE KING CATHOLIC CHURCH
    one grant, 2025 · $10k
  • SB
    SWAN BALL 2025
    one grant, 2025 · $3k
  • AH
    ALIVE HOSPICE INC
    one grant, 2025 · $3k · revenue +23%
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
04the grantee network

4 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 4 of the 11 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
4/4
Grantees still filing
2/4
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

CHRIST THE KING CATHOLIC CHURCH: $10,495 · OtherCHRIST THE KING CATHOLIC CHURCHSWAN BALL 2024: $7,000 · OtherSWAN BALL 2024Individual grant recipient: $4,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipientOAK HILL SCHOOL: $3,750 · OtherOAK HILL SCHOOLSWAN BALL 2025: $2,600 · OtherSWAN BALL 2025+4 more: $2,050 · Other+4 moreMOTHER TO MOTHER INC: $15,571 · Human ServicesMOTHER TO MOTHER INCALIVE HOSPICE INC: $2,500 · Human ServicesALIVE HOSPICE INC
Other$29,895Human Services$18,071

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

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetMOTHER TO MOTHER INC: $15,571 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetOAK HILL SCHOOL: $3,750 over 2y, 0.0% of budget
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.

  • Who funds MOTHER TO MOTHER INC ↗
  • Who funds OAK HILL SCHOOL ↗
  • Who funds ALIVE HOSPICE INC ↗
  • Who funds VOICES FOR A SAFER TENNESSEE ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 11 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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