· Private foundation
Milton and Denice Johnson 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.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 52% of MILTON AND DENICE JOHNSON FAMILY 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 $10k19 grants · $86k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $445k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $650k
- $250k+2 grants · $2.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WOODMONT CHRISTIAN CHURCH | $2,500,000 |
| PENCIL | $250,000 |
| WOODMONT CHRISTIAN CHURCH | $175,000 |
| CREATIVETS | $125,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $100,000 |
| ABE'S GARDEN | $100,000 |
| ON THE AVENUE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $50,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,000 |
| FRIST ART MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| CENTENNIAL PARK CONSERVANCY | $25,000 |
| OZ ARTS | $25,000 |
| MUSICIANS ON CALL | $25,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER NASHVILLE | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $264k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
56 repeat relationships — 47 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $155k 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
- HAHARDING ACADEMY4× · 2020–2023 · $1.0M · revenue +27%
FRIST ART MUSEUM6× · 2020–2025 · $165k · revenue +48%- NZNASHVILLE ZOO INC6× · 2020–2025 · $130k · revenue +85%
Funded once
- FCFAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICEone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue -29%
- OAOPERATION ANDREW GROUP INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +49%
- BCBLOOD CANCER UNITED INCone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue -16%
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.
Nashville public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
Ntc mission is to advance the diverse technology ecosystem by connecting and promoting members, attracting, growing and retaining tech talent, and providing opportunities to reinvest in the greater nashville community.
The nashville chamber public benefit foundation supports the work of the nashville area chamber of commerce through efforts to improve the quality of education, encourage public and private efforts around education, and to facilitate the…
Nashville cares exists to end the hiv epidemic, promote comprehensive sexual health and end sexual health stigmatization and discrimination through prevention, education, treatment, support, advocacy, and strategic partnership.
The nashville area chamber of commerce facilitates community leadership to create economic prosperity.
Leadership nashville identifies and invites a diverse cross-section of professional, civic and charitable leaders to participate in an intensive program designed to give them a multi-dimensional understanding of the community.
Nashville banner is a locally owned, community supported, civic news organization. we exist to empower the people of nashville to make informed decisions by providing non-partisan journalism from an independent, nonprofit newsroom. we are…
Nashvillehealth creates a culture of health and wellbeing by serving as a convener to open dialogue, aligning resources and building smart strategic partnerships to create a plan for health unique to nashvilles needs.
Girls write nashville empowers expression through songwriting, production, mentorship and creative community for teen artists. we are an artist and educator-led 501(c)(3) creative youth development program in nashville, tn allied with…
The mission of the state collaborative on reforming education (score) is to catalyze transformative change in tennessee education so that all students can achieve success. score is an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan institution,…
To ensure accessible early childhood education for all families in the greater nashville area.
To empower adults with developmental disabilities by providing affordable housing, work that is meaningful and an inclusive community in which to live.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Rescue Mission and the most unlike its peers is Chi Boule Foundation. 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 32 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 75 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 HARDING ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds PENCIL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ABE'S GARDEN ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds CREATIVETS ↗
- Who funds MUSICIANS ON CALL INC ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds GREENWAYS FOR NASHVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE GOLF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE ↗
- Who funds TRANSFORMATION LIFE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THISTLE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds OZ ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH DENTAL CLINIC OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds SILOAM HEALTH ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds OASIS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ALIVE HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds Goodwill Industries of Middle TN Inc ↗
- Who funds JOBS FOR AMERICA'S GRADUATES TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds THE ADOPTION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE FOOD PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Belmont University ↗
- Who funds MARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER 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: Hca Healthcare Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Frist Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · Dettwiller Foundation · Joe C Davis Foundation · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Nashville Predators Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Enchiridion Foundation · Louie M & Betty M Phillips Foundatn
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 Milton and Denice Johnson Family 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 Milton and Denice Johnson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Milton and Denice Johnson Family 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.