· Public charity
Memphis Bar Foundation
The foundation provides a platform for attorneys and others in the legal community to give back to the community by promoting legal education, social justice promotion and supporting public awareness of the profession.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2024–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 20 grants below total $43,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $76,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $33,000 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MEMPHIS AREA LEGAL SERVICES | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTER | $5,000 |
| CASALUZ INC | $2,000 |
| MEMPHIS DREAM CENTER | $2,000 |
| BRIDGES | $2,000 |
| MID-SOUTH COMMUNITY JUSTICE & MEDIATION CENTER | $2,000 |
| TENNESSEE INNOCENCE PROJECT | $2,000 |
| MEMPHIS PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER | $2,000 |
| A WAY OUT MINISTRIES | $2,000 |
| CRG FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| REACH MEMPHIS | $2,000 |
| LATINO MEMPHIS | $2,000 |
| MID-SOUTH IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES | $2,000 |
| GREENWOOD VILIAGES COMM DEVELOPMENT CORP | $2,000 |
| NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM | $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 (FY24–25, $23k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
20 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 0 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
- LCLorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation2× · 2024–2025 · $5k · revenue +41%
- LMLATINO MEMPHIS INC2× · 2024–2025 · $5k · revenue +62%
- MPMEMPHIS PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER2× · 2024–2025 · $5k · revenue +62%
Funded once
- BLBreakthrough Leadership Foundation2× · 2024–2025 · $3k
- SCSUICIDE & CRISIS INTERVENTION SVC2× · 2024–2025 · $3k · revenue +2%
- CFCENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN DECISION MAKING2× · 2024–2025 · $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.
To enforce, advance and defend the civil legal rights of low income and vulnerable people, especially on behalf of elderly, children, victims of domestic violence and persons with disabilities, by providing free, civil legal assistance to…
Legal services to poor and underprivileged.
Immigration Legal Services and Advocacy (ISLA) provides direct representation to indigent detained immigrants throughout Louisiana on a pro bono basis and under a universal representation model. ISLA provides information to the public to…
Southern California Immigration Project is a public interest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing pro bono legal services to survivors of human and civil rights violations.
Provide free or low cost legal assistance to latino asylum-seekers.
VIDA mainly represents immigrant survivors of violent crimes particularly domestic violence sexual assault abuse and trafficking in persons modern-day slavery forced labor.
Community Lawyers, Inc. provides underserved low- and no-income community members access to legal representation, pro-bono legal clinics, and community advocacy and engagement.
Legal aid of east tennessee provides legal representation, legal education, and other civil legal services for the low-income population in our community through advocacy of all types.
To provide free legal services to low-income citizens of jefferson county
To provide free and affordable immigration legal services to individuals who fall below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines or face other financial barriers to accessing legal representation, to educate the public about issues related…
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA)is a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote the dignity, self-sufficiency, security, and stability of low-income residents of Texas. TRLA provides free civil legal aid to residents living in the 68…
To provide civil legal services to low-income individuals and to promote equal access to the justice system through advocacy, legal counseling, innovative self-help services, in depth legal representation, community education, and economic…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Latino Memphis Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bridges. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 24 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 COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Memphis Area Legal Services Inc ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE INNOCENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds BRIDGES ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS FOR COMMUNITY VALUES INC ↗
- Who funds REACH MEMPHIS ↗
- Who funds Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation ↗
- Who funds LATINO MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds MERITAN INC ↗
- Who funds CRG Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CASALUZ ↗
- Who funds MID-SOUTH IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds THISTLE AND BEE ENTERPRISES INC ↗
- Who funds Bevo Boys Fitness Academy ↗
- Who funds Breakthrough Leadership Foundation ↗
- Who funds SUICIDE & CRISIS INTERVENTION SVC ↗
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: Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Thomas W Briggs Foundation Inc · The Assisi Foundation of Memphis Inc · United Way of the Mid South · The Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation · Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable 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 Memphis Bar 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 Memphis Bar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Memphis Bar 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.