· Private foundation
McKenzie Foundation D/B/A the McKenzie 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 44% of MCKENZIE FOUNDATION D/B/A THE MCKENZIE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $50k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $215k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $210k
Largely a single collection — about 97% of reported assets are Vintage Guitar Collection.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST | $60,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA | $50,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA PREPARATORY SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| PURPOSE POINT LEARNING CENTER | $50,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA AREA FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| MEN OF VALOR | $27,500 |
| BAYLOR SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| ADULT & TEEN CHALLENGE MIDSOUTH | $25,000 |
| CHATT FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| Boys & Girls Clubs of the Ocoee Region | $15,000 |
| Lookout Mountain School PTA | $15,000 |
| Welcome Home of Chattanooga | $12,000 |
| Tall Timbers Foundation Inc | $10,000 |
| Fairyland Elementary School PTO | $10,000 |
| Skyuka Hall | $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, $48k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 4% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
46 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down; 13 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $97k 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
- UWUNITED WAY OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA6× · 2019–2025 · $343k · revenue +23%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHATTANOOGA INC5× · 2018–2025 · $173k · revenue +138%
- MMMETROPOLITAN MINISTRIES INC6× · 2018–2024 · $155k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- TYTHE YOUNG WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP ACADEMY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $200k · revenue -54%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $165k
- CFCAMPAIGN FOR THE BOYS WOODBERRY FORREST SCHOOLone grant, 2019 · $125k
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.
Chattanooga design studio seeks to elevate the quality of life for all citizens through guidance, collaboration, innovation, and education that promotes livable, accessible, walkable, and humane urban design.
Our mission is to connect chattanooga's technology sector to drive regional economic growth.
To advocate for people who are homless or near homeless, strategically planning for housing and services in the community, maximizing resources and collaboarating with community partners to implement housing and services within the…
Invest chattanooga uses flexible, low-cost capital and strategic public-private partnerships to produce financially sustainable, mixed-income housing with deep permanent affordability that the market alone cannot deliver.
Family promise of greater chattanooga's mission is to provide help for homeless families with children be housed and self-sufficient.
To prepare students to lead and serve with distinction while representing christ and his kingdom in all areas of home, church, society and culture.
Mission: to create economically diverse neighborhoods filled with financially empowered citizens and housing for all.vision: all chattanoogans can afford a safe place in a strong neighborhood to call home. belief: we believe the future of…
To show the love of christ to the needy in our area by providing their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
To protect the architectural heritage of chattanooga through historic preservation, advocacy, and education
The mission of the charter school is to inspire all their children to the highest levels of academic achievement through a rigorous curriculum that integrates the wonders of the natural world.
We guide and encourage donors who are motivated toward kingdom-building generosity. our mission is carried out through four primary initiatives: providing donor-advised funds, inspiring and encouraging generosity within families along the…
Encourage economic development
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc and the most unlike its peers is Shaking Ray Levi Society Inc. 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 26 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
70 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. 70 of the 121 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 BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc ↗
- Who funds SONGBIRDS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP ACADEMY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE OCOEE REGION ↗
- Who funds Chattanooga Area Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGAHAMILTON COUNTY PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CHATTANOOGA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ENTERPRISE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds BAYLOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF REFUGE INC ↗
- Who funds WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LIFT YOUTH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA AREA INC ↗
- Who funds MEN OF VALOR ↗
- Who funds MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY AT HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds SKYUKA HALL ↗
- Who funds CHATTACADEMY COMMUNITY SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds THE LAUNCH PAD ↗
- Who funds RISE CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds CHATT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WELCOME HOME OF CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds DYNAMO STUDIOS ↗
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: Chattanooga Christian Community Foundation · Robert F Stone Foundation AKA Bobby Stone Foundation · The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc · Benwood Foundation Inc · Weldon F Osborne Foundation Inc · Lyndhurst Foundation Inc · The Maclellan Foundation Inc · Robert L & Kathrina H Maclellan Founda Foundation · Tucker Foundation · The Howard Fund · Hamico Inc · Lillian L Colby Charitable Fdn Ia
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 McKenzie Foundation D/B/A the McKenzie 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to McKenzie Foundation D/B/A the McKenzie Foundation?
Find your warmest path to McKenzie Foundation D/B/A the McKenzie 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.