· Private foundation
Matt H Dobson 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 $10k3 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $12k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARPETH CONSERVANCY | $11,716 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,990 |
| MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY | $5,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 80% of your 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 +55% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MBMONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE8× · 2017–2025 · $186k · revenue +6%
- HCHARPETH CONSERVANCY8× · 2018–2025 · $72k · revenue +281%
- CBCHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART7× · 2017–2024 · $37k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $8k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $3k
- SISUNDAY IN THE PARKone grant, 2018 · $3k
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 an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The mission of the Tennessee Aquarium is to connect people with nature and empower them to make informed decisions about water and wildlife.
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
To bravely imagine the power and passion of opera and who can sing and enjoy it.
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
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…
The national press photographers association is dedicated to the advancement of visual journalism, its creation, practice, training, editing and distribution, in all news media and works to promote its role as a vital public service.
The mission of the NCVB is to maximize the economic contribution of the hospitality industry to the total community by developing and marketing Nashville as a premier domestic and international destination for visitors. This is the second…
Our mission is to serve our members through education, professionalism, and legislative involvement
Greenways for nashville promotes, supports, and enhances a system of greenways and open space in nashville and davidson county.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Public Radio and the most unlike its peers is The National World War Ii Museum Inc. 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 46 years old; the field is 27. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 49 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 MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds HARPETH CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE HARPETH HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE PUBLIC TELEVISION INC ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Delta Waterfowl Foundation ↗
- Who funds 6 8 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HUNDRED CLUB OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE BALLET ↗
- Who funds Ducks Unlimited Inc ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds Franklin Firefighters Association ↗
- Who funds BELCOURT THEATRE 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: The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Wade-Buntin Family Foundation · Sandra Schatten Foundation · Patricia and Rodes Hart Foundation · The Annette & Irwin Eskind Family Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · Kelley Robertson Foundation · Thomas & Mamie Houser Charitable Foundation · Anne Bransford Wallace Foundation · James R Meadows Jr 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 Matt H Dobson 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.
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.