· Public charity
Mississippi Hills Heritage Area Alliance
The mission of the MISSISSIPPI HILLS HERITAGE AREA ALLIANCE is to preserve, enhance, interpret, and promote the cultural and heritage assets of the hills region.
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.
The 12 grants below total $387,407 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $407,191 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $19,784 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $141k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $240k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI | $100,010 |
| COLUMBUS CULTURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATI | $90,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI MAIN STREET ASSN | $50,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI PRESENTERS NETWORK | $20,000 |
| STARKVILLE CVB | $20,000 |
| FRIENDS OF SIEGE & BATTLE OF CORINT | $20,000 |
| CHICKASAW COUNTY HISTORICAL AND GEN | $20,000 |
| TIPPAH COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM | $17,973 |
| THE ROSA FOUNDATION | $14,852 |
| YOKNAPATAWPHA ARTS COUNCIL | $14,817 |
| VISIT OXFORD | $13,487 |
| BOONEVILLE MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION | $6,268 |
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 (FY20–20, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Mississippi Hills Heritage Area Alliance’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 99% of the giving stays in MS; read by stated purpose it is 92% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +23% since the first grant, against -21% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 7 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, 48% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $203k 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
- MMMISSISSIPPI MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION INC3× · 2023–2025 · $150k · revenue +23%
- UCUNION COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC3× · 2020–2023 · $64k · revenue +90%
- RMRIPLEY MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION INC2× · 2021–2024 · $57k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- NANew Albany Main Street Associationone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue -21%
- MHMISSISSIPPI HERITAGE TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +69%
- RCRUST COLLEGEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $20k · revenue +71%
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.
Preserve the history of the city of canton and madison county ms
Preserve downtown area as an economical and commercial center by bringing culture and business enterprises to the area.
Attract new industry & support existing industry
Promote the activity in Downtown Batesville
To preserve the history of marion county alabama
Preservation of items of historical significance in and to the community of spruce pine, alabama.
To promote the historic preservation and restoration of downtown Searcy, Arkansas.
Preserve the history of shelby county al
Revitalize and enhance downtown area
Operation of county museum and preservation of museum assets
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Union County Historical Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rosa 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 23 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% 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 15% 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 32 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 MISSISSIPPI MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS CULTURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNION COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RIPLEY MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds PONTOTOC COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds BOONEVILLE MAIN STREET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds YOKNAPATAWPHA ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds New Albany Main Street Association ↗
- Who funds TISHOMINGO COUNTY DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER STARKVILLE DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI PRESENTERS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI HERITAGE TRUST ↗
- Who funds RUST COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMNS TIPPAH COUNTY INTERPRETIVE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ROSA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BRICES CROSSROADS BATTLEFIELD COMM ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE SIEGE AND BATTLE OF CORINTH INC ↗
- Who funds Holly Springs Main Street Association Incorporated ↗
- Who funds CREATE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRESERVE MARSHALL COUNTY & HOLLY SP ↗
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: Mississippi Humanities Council Inc · 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 Mississippi Hills Heritage Area Alliance 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.