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Tena & Fred Oates Foundation at a glance

· Public charity

Tena & Fred Oates Foundation

Charitable and philanthropic endeavors in support of and in conjunction with the Spartanburg county foundation.

$25k
Granted FY2023
1
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$25k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
04Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2023.

Health$60kRecreation & Sports$25kYouth Development$10kHuman Services$10kAnimals$5k
02FY2023 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$25,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$1.2M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Healthy Smiles of Spartanburg Inc$25,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 91% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%GIRL SCOUTS MOUNTAINS TO MIDLANDS: $10k → 10%SPARTANBURG REGIONAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION: $20k → 15%THE LAKE SUMMIT FOUNDATION: $25k → 12%SPARTANBURG REGIONAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION: $10k → 15%YMCA OF GREATER SPARTANBURG: $10k → 15%HEALTHY SMILES OF SPARTANBURG INC: $5k → 15%THE SPARTANBURG HUMANE SOCIETY: $5k → 15%Healthy Smiles of Spartanburg Inc: $25k → 15%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
5/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System Foundation: $30,000 · HealthSpartanburg Regional Healthcare System FoundationHEALTHY SMILES OF SPARTANBURG INC: $30,000 · HealthHEALTHY SMILES OF SPARTANBURG INCLAKE SUMMIT FOUNDATION INC: $25,000 · OtherLAKE SUMMIT FOUNDATION INCYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION of Greater Spartanburg: $10,000 · OtherYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION of Great…SPARTANBURG HUMANE SOCIETY INC: $5,000 · OtherSPARTANBURG HUMANE SOCIETY INCGIRL SCOUTS OF SOUTH CAROLINA - MOUNTAINS TO MIDLANDS INC: $10,000 · Youth DevelopmentGIRL SCOUT…
Health$60,000Other$40,000Youth Development$10,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetSpartanburg Regional Healthcare System Foundation: $30,000 over 2y, 0.2% of budgetHEALTHY SMILES OF SPARTANBURG INC: $30,000 over 2y, 4.2% of budgetLAKE SUMMIT FOUNDATION INC: $25,000 over 1y, 2.6% of budgetYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION of Greater Spartanburg: $10,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Spartanburg County Fo…United Way of the Pie…Mary Black Foundation…J M Smith FoundationDonor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Spartanburg County FoundationSC17.8× affinity6 shared granteesties to 6 of 6Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Spartanburg County Foundation · United Way of the Piedmont Inc · Mary Black Foundation Inc · J M Smith Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Tena & Fred Oates Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Tena & Fred Oates Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%6%13%19%25%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–25%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Tena & Fred Oates Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to Tena & Fred Oates 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 6 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2023, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Tena & Fred Oates’ filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home