· Private foundation
Nelson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $1,155,410 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER ATLANTA | $475,714 |
| ATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $475,714 |
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 (FY21–23, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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.
32 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 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
- ACATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC4× · 2021–2024 · $511k · revenue +10%
- GAGEORGIA AQUARIUM INC & SUBSIDIARY3× · 2021–2023 · $13k · revenue +44%
- RWROBERT W WOODRUFF ARTS CENTER INC3× · 2021–2023 · $6k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- PBPUBLIC BROADCASTING ATLANTAone grant, 2021 · $1k
- TNTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY IN GEORGIAone grant, 2023 · $1k
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.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Scad prepares talented students for creative professions through engaged teaching and learning in a positively oriented university environment.
Founded in 1780, the american academy of arts and sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together "to…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
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 institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
To advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects, through archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research; and to further the professional interest of american anthropologist, including the…
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Forever Family 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 37 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 Ball State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FAMILIES IN ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA AQUARIUM INC & SUBSIDIARY ↗
- Who funds ROBERT W WOODRUFF ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA JUSTICE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds FOREVER FAMILY INC ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Atlanta Humane Society & Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds HEART MOUNTAIN WYOMING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TREES ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds USO COUNCIL OF GEORGIA INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds Chastain Park Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
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 Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Inc · United Way of Greater Atlanta Inc · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · Annie E Casey Foundation Inc · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Nelson 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 Nelson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Nelson 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.