· Private foundation
Speer Charitable Trust
Its FY2024 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k16 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $328k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JUDE | $400,000 |
| ST PAUL CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $385,000 |
| AVE MARIA HOME | $250,000 |
| CHRISTIAN BROTHERS UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| MID-SOUTH FOOD BANK | $162,000 |
| HARWOOD CENTER | $102,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF WEST TENNESSEE | $100,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $100,000 |
| MIFA | $80,000 |
| CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF MEMPHIS | $75,500 |
| ALLIANCE HEALTHCARE SERVICES | $75,000 |
| A STEP AHEAD FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ROOM IN THE INN MEMPHIS | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| TN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +7% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
56 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $162k 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
- MFMID-SOUTH FOOD BANK5× · 2020–2024 · $916k · revenue +7%
- HCHARWOOD CENTER INC5× · 2020–2024 · $723k · revenue +12%
YOUTH VILLAGES INC3× · 2020–2022 · $500k · revenue +101%
Funded once
- SCSHELBY COUNTY VETERANS COone grant, 2021 · $50k
- DLDENEUVILLE LEARNING CENTER FOR WOMENone grant, 2023 · $25k
- ICIMMACULATE CONCEPTIONone grant, 2020 · $15k
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.
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis, Inc. sees a world where every family has what they need to ensure the best health outcomes for their children. They provide essential services that remove barriers, strengthen families, and…
Methodist Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
Memphis recovery centers, inc. (mrc) provides compassionate treatment services for youth and adults suffering from substance addiction and co-occurring disorders, utilizing professional methods to improve spiritual, physical, emotional,…
Methodist le bonheur healthcare, in partnership with its medical staffs, will collaborate with patients and their families to be the leader in providing high quality, cost-effective patient-and family-centered care. services will be…
Mental health cooperative inc. (mhc) provides integrated health services that include behavioral health care, primary health care, addiction services, and community-based care management. mhc also provides emergency psychiatric services…
To provide substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation programs to women in-and-around the memphis tennessee area.
Memphis tomorrow is an association of ceos of memphis' largest businesses working to promote opportunity and quality of life for all memphians through collective action and public-private partnerships.
Community alliance for the homeless unites partners and coordinates a comprehensive response system to end homelessness in memphis and shelby county.
Exists to educate and empower women to choose and cherish life.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Porter-Leath and the most unlike its peers is Cancer Card Xchange. 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 45 years old; the field is 61. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 14% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 83 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 CHRISTIAN BROTHERS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MID-SOUTH FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds HARWOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH VILLAGES INC ↗
- Who funds MIFA CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds JIFF INC ↗
- Who funds AVE MARIA HOME INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHURCH HEALTH CENTER OF MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds A STEP AHEAD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF WEST TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS UNION MISSON ↗
- Who funds MADONNA LEARNING CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds SchoolSeed Foundation ↗
- Who funds ROOM IN THE INN - MEMPHIS ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA INC 558 CHICKASAW COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds PORTER-LEATH ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT OF MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE HEALTHCARE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CANCER CARD XCHANGE ↗
- Who funds MID-SOUTH PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS FOUNDATION ↗
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: Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · The Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation · United Way of the Mid South · Thomas W Briggs Foundation Inc · The Day Foundation · The Assisi Foundation of Memphis Inc · Lichterman Loewenberg Foundation · Gadomski Family Foundation · Belz Foundation · Jr Hyde III Family Foundation · Elvis Presley Charitable 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.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Speer Charitable Trust 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 Speer Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Speer Charitable Trust 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.