· Private foundation
Summers 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 $10k30 grants · $43k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $62k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BRIGHTSTONE | $34,000 |
| TRAIL LIFE USA | $15,000 |
| FRIENDSLIFE COMMUNITY | $12,500 |
| BACKLIGHT PRODUCTIONS | $7,000 |
| NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION | $5,000 |
| ON THE AVENUE FOUNDATION OF TN | $5,000 |
| TURNING POINT USA | $2,500 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| NASHVILLE DOLPHINS | $2,000 |
| OPERATION FREEDOM | $1,500 |
| GRACE RESOURCES | $1,500 |
| INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS INC | $1,400 |
| FRONTIERS | $1,400 |
| EAST WEST MINISTRIES | $1,400 |
| YOUNG LIFE CAPERNAUM | $1,200 |
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 (FY21–25, $69k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 80% 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.
42 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 4 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- TLTRAIL LIFE USA INC5× · 2021–2025 · $62k · revenue +129%
- FLFriends Life Community5× · 2021–2025 · $55k · revenue +37%
- DADOLPHIN AQUATICS DBA NASHVILLE DOLPHINS8× · 2017–2025 · $20k · revenue +210%
Funded once
- YLYOUNG LIFEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $23k · revenue +59%
- VPVARIOUS PUBLIC CHARITIES TCSone grant, 2017 · $6k
- VPVARIOUS PUBLIC CHARITIES WHSone grant, 2017 · $6k
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.
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Evangel is a comprehensive christian university that is committed to excellence in educating and equipping students to become spirit empowered servants of god who will impact the church and society globally.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
George fox university, a christ centered community, prepares students spiritually, academically, and professionally to think with clarity, act with integrity, and serve with passion.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
We provide exemplary interdisciplinary programs for a community of scholar-practitioners within a distributed learning model grounded in student-driven inquiry and leading to enhanced knowledge.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
North greenville university exists to glorify god by cultivating graduates who are equipped to serve as transformational leaders for church and society.
Arizona christian university provides a biblically-integrated, liberal arts education equipping graduates to serve the lord jesus christ in all aspects of life, as leaders of influence and excellence.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
The mission of criswell college is to provide ministerial and professional higher education for men and women preparing to serve as christian leaders throughout society, while maintaining an institutional commitment to biblical inerrancy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 59 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 TRAIL LIFE USA INC ↗
- Who funds Friends Life Community ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds DOLPHIN AQUATICS DBA NASHVILLE DOLPHINS ↗
- Who funds LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds East-West Ministries International ↗
- Who funds GRACE RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds National Parents Organization Inc ↗
- Who funds BACKFIELD IN MOTION ↗
- Who funds BACKLIGHT PRODUCTIONS ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT VERITAS ↗
- Who funds ON THE AVENUE FOUNDATION OF TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FREEDOM INC FKA SAR ADVENTURES INC ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds MIO Frontiers ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds NRA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds My Bag My Story ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
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 · Nashville Predators Foundation · Hca Healthcare Foundation · Louie M & Betty M Phillips Foundatn · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment 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 Summers 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.