· Private foundation
Ruth Nelson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 69% of Ruth Nelson 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.
The 79 grants below total $3,053,550 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,643,350 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $589,800 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 · FY2023
- Under $10k28 grants · $119k
- $10k–50k31 grants · $633k
- $50k–250k19 grants · $1.6M
- $250k+1 grant · $700k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Catholic Charities | $700,000 |
| Clarehouse | $231,000 |
| Emergency Infant Service | $160,000 |
| Day Center for the Homeless | $155,000 |
| Helping Hands Ministry | $120,000 |
| Planned Parenthood Great Plains | $100,000 |
| Crosstown Learning Center | $85,000 |
| South Peoria Neighborhood Connect Fnd | $75,000 |
| Jewish Federation of Tulsa | $71,000 |
| Mental Health Association | $70,000 |
| Eastern Oklahoma Donated Dental | $60,000 |
| Tulsa Center for the Physically Limited | $60,000 |
| Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma | $60,000 |
| Life Senior Services of Tulsa | $55,000 |
| Community Service Council of Tulsa | $50,000 |
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.
8 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2023, 0 since wound down; 68 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2023, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.3M 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
Clarehouse Inc2× · 2020–2023 · $256k · revenue +16%
CROSSTOWN LEARNING CENTER INC2× · 2020–2023 · $110k · revenue +5%
LITTLE LIGHT HOUSE INC2× · 2020–2023 · $20k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- CFCommunity Food Bankone grant, 2020 · $5k
- BSBoy Scouts of Americaone grant, 2020 · $5k
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 prepare students for college through a rigorous arts infused program.
The operation of a public charter school in the tulsa area with the mission to equip all scholars with the academic skills, content knowledge, and ethical character required for college graduation and life success.
The tulsa regional chamber transforms the tulsa region by attracting and retaining employers, talent and tourism for long-term prosperity.
The tulsa area united way unites people and resources to improve lives and strengthen our communities.
To inspire children, connect families, and build community through exploration, exhibits, programming, and play.
To improve the lives of children and youth in oklahoma's child welfare system by providing resources and building community.
To promote the flourishing of the people of oklahoma by advancing principles and policies that support free enterprise, limited government, personal responsibility, and individual initiative.
Provide the poor of the city of tulsa, oklahoma an opportunity to improve their quality of life through guidance and training in the areas of education, employment, family skills, healthcare, housing, socialization and spirituality.
The oklahoma hall of fame preserves oklahomas unique history while promoting pride in our great state through each of its programs and the gaylord-pickens museum. the association honors our states rich tradition by telling oklahomas story…
The mission of tsas middle and high school is to provide students a multi-strand liberal arts education in a safe, supportive, individualized and challenging school environment through a college preparatory curriculum.
Ywca is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tulsa provides essential services that remove barriers, strengthen families, and promote healing when children need healthcare.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mental Health Association in Tulsa Inc dba Mental Health Association Oklahoma and the most unlike its peers is Metropolitan Museum of Art. 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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 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.
49 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. 49 of the 80 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 CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF OKLAHOMA CITY INC ↗
- Who funds Clarehouse Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD GREAT PLAINS ↗
- Who funds BOSTON AVENUE HELPING HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSTOWN LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF TULSA ↗
- Who funds Mental Health Association in Tulsa Inc dba Mental Health Association Oklahoma ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF EASTERN OKLAHOMA INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds The Food Project Inc ↗
- Who funds DREXEL ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INTERVENTION SERVICES ↗
- Who funds INDIAN HEALTH CARE RESOURCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds A NEW LEAF INC ↗
- Who funds TULSA BOYS' HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Oklahoma Caring Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN CENTER FOR RECONCILIATION INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SERVICES OF TULSA INC ↗
- Who funds Transitional Living Centers of Oklahoma Inc ↗
- Who funds KIPP TULSA ACADEMY COLLEGE PREP INC ↗
- Who funds Tulsa Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds LITTLE LIGHT HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds HIV Resource Consortium Inc dba Tulsa CARES ↗
- Who funds Hearts for Hearing Foundation ↗
- Who funds STREET SCHOOL 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: The Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation · Tulsa Community Foundation · George Kaiser Family Foundation · Mervin Bovaird Foundation · Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation · The Sharna and Irvin Frank Foundation · Ralph and Frances McGill Foundation the Trust Company of Oklahoma · The Hardesty Family Foundation Inc · The Gelvin Foundation · Hille Family Charitable Foundation · Grace & Franklin Bernsen Foundation · One Gas Foundation Inc
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.
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