· Private foundation
Stephen B Smith Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $19k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY | $19,150 |
| MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
| THE DREAM CENTER INC | $500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of your 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.
3 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $278k 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
- MTMIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $544k · revenue -12%
- MBMONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE2× · 2021–2022 · $100k · revenue +11%
- ROROCKETOWN OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE2× · 2020–2021 · $2k · revenue -56%
Funded once
- MTMiddle Tennessee State University Athleticsone grant, 2018 · $40k
- TFTWH Foundationone grant, 2020 · $30k
- MTMiddle TN Council - Boy Scouts of Americaone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
The nashville chamber public benefit foundation supports the work of the nashville area chamber of commerce through efforts to improve the quality of education, encourage public and private efforts around education, and to facilitate the…
Scholarships to be awarded at The University of Mississippi
Wake Forest University, a 501(c)(3) institution of higher education, is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts and in graduate and professional education. The organization is comprised of seven constituent parts: Wake…
The Mend House is a sober living community for men, in Knoxville, Tn. which empowers them to gain control over their actions, decisions and choices. The Mend House allows men to enjoy clean, sober and stable housing for up to 2 years while…
People who have just been released from prison are typically stigmatized, overlooked, and pigeonholed by society. when they walk into project return, they discover that here they are valued, heard, and encouraged. while reduction of…
The nashville area chamber of commerce facilitates community leadership to create economic prosperity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Heritage Plantation Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 29 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 MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds OPERATION ANDREW GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE PLANTATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOBART AMES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKETOWN OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR HOMES aka Homes 4 Homes ↗
- Who funds THISTLE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds The Dream Center Inc ↗
- Who funds MY POSSIBILITIES ↗
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 of Middle Tennessee Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Stephen B Smith Charitable 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 Stephen B Smith Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Stephen B Smith Charitable 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.