· Private foundation
Phil Hardin Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k32 grants · $721k
- $50k–250k34 grants · $3.0M
- $250k+2 grants · $750k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MS CHILDRENS MUSEUM | $450,000 |
| MS ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT CENTER | $300,000 |
| MERIDIAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| LAUDERDALE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $200,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI CHILDRENS MUSEUM | $150,000 |
| LAUDERDALE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $140,000 |
| JACKSON PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT | $125,000 |
| NATIONAL CENTER OF EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY | $125,000 |
| MILSAPS COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| MERIDIAN ART ASSOCIATION | $100,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTHWEST MS | $100,000 |
| THE MISSISSIPPI READING CLINIC | $100,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF EAST MS | $80,000 |
| MS ALLIANCE OF NONPROFITS | $75,000 |
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, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 23%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 98% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 17% of Phil Hardin Foundation’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, 96% of the giving stays in MS; read by stated purpose it is 80% — 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.
100 repeat relationships — 48 still active in FY2025, 52 since wound down; 18 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $525k 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
- MCMeridian Community College Foundation9× · 2017–2025 · $1.9M · revenue +73%
- MSMississippi State University Foundation Inc8× · 2017–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +153%
- FPFREEDOM PROJECT NETWORK6× · 2020–2025 · $685k · revenue ×29 · 76% of their budget
Funded once
DELTA HEALTH ALLIANCE INCone grant, 2019 · $150k · revenue -22%- BUBELLHAVEN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $125k
- MAMS ASSOCIATION OF GRANTMAKERSone grant, 2019 · $102k
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 publish deep public-interest reporting into causes of and solutions to the social, political, and systemic challenges facing all mississipians and their communities.
MCIR is an independent nonprofit news organization, tasked with educating and informing the people of Mississippi with in-depth, fact-based, nonpartisan information. MCIR focuses on institutionalized injustice and generational poverty.
To advance the educational interests of mississippi, promote professional excellence among educators, and to advance educators interests and welfare.
To promote mississippi arts and entertainment.
Jmg's mission is to keep young people in school through graduation and provide work-based learning experiences that will lead to career advancement opportunities or to enroll in a postsecondary institution that leads to a rewarding career.
The mississippi charter schools association drives the development and growth of high-quality public charter schools through school support, advocacy, and outreach.
To produce lifelong learners, critical thinkers, effective communicators, and productive members of the global community
To advance the ideals of limited government, free markets, and strong families by providing government officials, the media, and the public with information and perspective to help them understand and defend liberty.
Our mission is to enhance education for local students through a rigorous, internationally inspired curriculum enriched with technology, cultural exploration, and active community engagement.
Operate a charter school in montgomery, al providing innovative programs designed to spark curiosity, maximize learning potential, and continuously improve student achievement by empowering students with 21st century skills.
To build a sense of statewide business community. as the state chamber of commerce, the organization serves as a meaningful voice on issues and initiatives focusing on the state's future in education, workforce, business climate and image.
Support the research activities of the university of mississippi medical center
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Foundation of Mississippi and the most unlike its peers is Afternoon Adventure Learning Center. 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 29 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
82 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. 82 of the 167 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 CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Meridian Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds Mississippi State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Millsaps College ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM PROJECT NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION OF MISSISSIPPI ↗
- Who funds MERIDIAN SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds East Mississippi Business Development Foundation ↗
- Who funds Belhaven University ↗
- Who funds SPRING INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds New Destiny Daycare and Learning Academy ↗
- Who funds Meridian Art Association ↗
- Who funds The National Center on Education and the Economy ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR MISSISSIPPI ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR MISSISSIPPI HISTORY ↗
- Who funds EAST CENTRAL MS HEALTH NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SHOESTRING INC ↗
- Who funds THE MISSISSIPPI READING CLINIC ↗
- Who funds PROGRAM OF RESEARCH & EVALUATION FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Mississippi 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: Community Foundation for Mississippi · Mississippi Humanities Council Inc · Mississippi Power Foundation Inc · Ergon Foundation Inc · Selby and Richard McRae Foundation · Walker Foundation · Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi · The Riley Foundation · Woodward Hines Education Foundation · C Spire Foundation · Kathryn & Julian Wiener Fund · WK Kellogg 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 Phil Hardin 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 Phil Hardin Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Phil Hardin 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.