· Private foundation
Strain Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $350k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $305k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH | $155,000 |
| ALABAMA SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE NET | $50,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF AUTAUGACHI | $50,000 |
| EMBRACE ALABAMA KIDS | $50,000 |
| ALABAMA APPLESEED CENTER FOR LAW AN | $35,000 |
| ALABAMA ARISE | $35,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S OF CENTRAL AL | $25,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY IN ALABAMA | $25,000 |
| ALABAMA INSTITUTE FOR DEAF AND BLIN | $20,000 |
| LOW INCOME HOUSING INITIATIVE | $20,000 |
| YOUTH LEADERSHIP FORUM | $20,000 |
| INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| GIRLS INC OF CENTRAL ALABAMA | $15,000 |
| WEST ALABAMA FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| CAHABA RIVER SOCIETY | $15,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $126k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +21% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 27 since wound down; 21 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $287k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH2× · 2018–2024 · $280k · revenue +49%
- WFWOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA4× · 2020–2023 · $75k · revenue +131%
- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC3× · 2017–2021 · $40k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- HFHabitat for Humanity of Florida Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +285%
- HAHOUSTON AREA FOOD BANKone grant, 2017 · $15k
- NANORTHWEST ALABAMA HABITAT FOR HUMANone grant, 2017 · $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.
To feed people in need today and foster collaborative solutions to end hunger tomorrow.
Aids alabama devotes its energy and resources statewide to helping people with hiv/aids live healthy, independent lives and works to prevent the spread of hiv.
Habitat for humanity of baldwin county, inc. is an ecumenical, christian housing ministry that seeks to eliminate poverty housing by partnering with the community to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and 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 provide quality healthcare and related services to all communities, including the underserved and homeless persons, regardless of language, culture, or financial barriers
The Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
Coordinate rc&d activity in alabama
A nonpartisan grassroots communication organization that works to raise awareness and increase engagement around community issues in alabama by working directly with civic organizations advocating civic participation in communities across…
The alabama alliance netowrk works to strengthen and enhance alabama's civic society through research, education, and grantmaking
Administration of federal, state and local awards and grants for the poverty sector of a 7 county area in alabama, providing headstart education, food, shelter, maintenance, and weatherization programs.
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.
Legal services alabama is a statewide nonprofit dedicated to providing access to justice and quality civil legal assistance to educate and empower alabama's low-income community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Black Warrior Riverkeeper Inc and the most unlike its peers is Northwest Al Mental Health Center. 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 28 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 86 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 UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds WEST ALABAMA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST CHILDREN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA ARISE ACTION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds Cahaba River Society Inc ↗
- Who funds VOICES for Alabama's Children ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY MIDDLE EAST ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE UNITED ↗
- Who funds Alabama Rivers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds VESTAVIA HILLS SOCCER CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds MAIN STREET MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds SERVICE DOGS ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds KID ONE TRANSPORT SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds Habitat for Humanity of Florida 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 Daniel Foundation of Alabama · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Stephens Foundation · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · Alabama Civil Justice Foundation · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · The Gratitude Foundation · Better Place Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Protective Life 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 Strain 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 Strain Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Strain 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.