· Private foundation
Stephens Foundation
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k42 grants · $158k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $392k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALABAMA RIVERS ALLIANCE | $60,000 |
| BIRMINGHAM SOUTHERN COLLEGE | $40,000 |
| ALYS STEPHENS CENTER | $35,000 |
| BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM OF ART | $35,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| GIRLSPRING INC | $26,000 |
| COMPASSION AND CHOICES | $25,000 |
| ALABAMA BALLET | $25,000 |
| SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENT LAW CENTER | $25,000 |
| ALABAMA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $20,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL ALABAMA | $20,000 |
| BLACK WARRIOR RIVERKEEPER | $18,000 |
| RED MOUNTAIN THEATRE COMPANY | $15,000 |
| BAPTIST HEALTH FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| STAIR OF BIRMINGHAM | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $117k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
87 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2024, 41 since wound down; 15 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $84k 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
UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL ALABAMA INC8× · 2017–2024 · $512k · revenue +74%- ACAlabama Children's Hospital Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $260k · revenue +81%
- GIGIRLSPRING INC8× · 2017–2024 · $215k · revenue +125% · 53% of their budget
Funded once
- BMBIRMINGHAM MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $36k
- AARTPLAYone grant, 2020 · $25k
- HFHOME FIELD ADVANTAGEone grant, 2022 · $20k
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 promote the preservation and continued development of commercial banking in alabama.
Coordinate rc&d activity in alabama
To support the university of alabama at birmingham in its scientific and educational mission, including managing and disbursing funds, acquiring real property, and providing operational flexibility.
The alabama alliance netowrk works to strengthen and enhance alabama's civic society through research, education, and grantmaking
The Organization focuses on providing services via conservation easements, administration of various grants, educational outreach and planning.
The Alabama A&M University Foundation was established to receive, hold, invest, manage, use, and administer property of all kinds, whether given absolutely or in trust, for the benefit of Alabama A&M University and its educational,…
The university foundation is organized to assist and aid the board of trustees of the university of alabama in fulfilling its educational, research, and public service programs and activities.
A statewide trade association which serves as a resource through which its electric cooperative members are provided services for the continuation and advancement of the rural electrification program in Alabama.
The alabama association of conservation districts (aacd) is the unified voice of alabama's 67 conservation districts. organized as a 501(c)3, aacd works in cooperation with the alabama soil & water conservation committee, federal, state,…
To build the ability of Alabama citizens and organizations to promote conservation through government and civic action.
To work in partnership with families and organizations to ensure that all alabama children (birth to five) get everything they need to develop to their fullest potential.
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alabama Children's Hospital Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. 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 33 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
105 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 105 of the 157 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 UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds Alabama Children's Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds GIRLSPRING INC ↗
- Who funds Gasp ↗
- Who funds Alabama Rivers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds BLACK WARRIOR RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds LIFE Skills Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE STATE OF ALABAMA BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The Summit School Incorporated ↗
- Who funds COOSA RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds LINLY HEFLIN UNIT INC ↗
- Who funds RED MOUNTAIN THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMERS OF CENTRAL ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds STAIR OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Birmingham Inc ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA HUMANITIES ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA INSTITUTE FOR DEAF & BLIND FOUND ↗
- Who funds BETTER BASICS INC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY PREP CENTER OF TAMPA INC ↗
- Who funds Gateway ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMPASSION & CHOICES ↗
- Who funds PAINT ROCK FOREST RESEARCH CENTER ↗
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 Greater Birmingham · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Protective Life Foundation · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Altecstyslinger Foundation · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · The Maynard Nexsen Foundation · Orlean & Ralph W Beeson 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 Stephens 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.
- The Spring of Tampa Bay Inc — 33% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% of income from government
- Academy Prep Center of Tampa Inc — 3% of income from government
- Tampa Bay Waterkeeper Inc — 0% of income from government
- Metropolitan Ministries Inc — 0% of income from government
- Tampa Museum of Art Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Stephens Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Stephens 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.