· Private foundation
The Ayers Foundation Trust
Its FY2025 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 FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $234k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $707k
- $250k+6 grants · $9.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DECATUR CO BOARD OF EDUCATION | $5,000,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TN | $1,784,000 |
| BELMONT UNIVERSITY | $1,500,250 |
| UNICOI COUNTY UNITED WAY | $1,020,000 |
| BILL DANCE FRIENDS AND FAMILY FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $250,000 |
| FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LEADERSHIP | $106,600 |
| STATE COLLABORATIVE ON REFORMING EDUCATION | $100,000 |
| ST JUDES CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $50,000 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $50,000 |
| UNICOI AND COCKE COUNTIES | $37,648 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $35,500 |
| FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH | $32,905 |
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 (FY24–25, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +13% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down; 24 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, 24% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.8M 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
- BUBelmont University2× · 2024–2025 · $3.0M · revenue +11%
- VUVanderbilt University Medical Center2× · 2024–2025 · $500k · revenue +13%
- FUFREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY2× · 2024–2025 · $400k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- ETEast TN State University Foundationone grant, 2024 · $200k
- L-Lipscomb -LdrshpPublServiceone grant, 2024 · $160k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $150k
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 be a successful physician led, professionally managed medical practice that benefits our patients and our community, while supporting the UT Health Science Center's mission through clinical excellence, financial responsibility and a…
See Disclosure Above.
To promote and support literacy, scientific, educational,scholarship,research, and developmental goals at tennessee state university.
Cumberland Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health, regardless of the patient's ability to pay.
To maintain high standards for nursing homes in the state of tennessee and to seek the solutions to problems common to members of the association.
To facilitate innovative research and education, improve healthcare programs that benefit our nation's veterans, and provide outstanding support and advocacy to the research, education, and training endeavors of the tennessee valley…
The foundation enriches the lives of the students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of the university of tennessee through alumni engagement, financial stewardship and private gift support.
Methodist Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
The organizations mission is to promote and maintain a business climate favorable to businesses in tennessee.
The tennessee independent colleges and universities association (ticua) engages tennessee's private colleges and universities to work collaboratively in areas of public policy, cost containment, and professional development to better serve…
The mission of tccn is to support, educate, and represent non-profit organizations that provide charitable healthcare services to low-income, uninsured, and underserved tennesseans. tccn envisions a strong, compassionate healthcare safety…
The united way of south central tennessee's mission is to improve lives by advancing opportunities for education, health, and financial stability for all. its vision is to be the primary community solutions leader for human services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc and the most unlike its peers is Taf Covid Response Foundation. 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 35 years old; the field is 26. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 54 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 THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds Belmont University ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds BALLAD HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE STATE COLLABORATIVE ON REFORMING EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR THE COLLEGE SYSTEM OF TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds LANE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF UNICOI COUNTY ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE WILDLIFE RESOURCES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEN OF VALOR ↗
- Who funds CENTERSTONE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WEST TENNESSEINC STARKS ↗
- Who funds SMALL MIRACLES THERAPEUTIC EQUESTRIAN CENTER 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: Ayers Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Tennessee Health Foundation Inc · The Frist Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · West Tn Healthcare Foundation Inc · Stowers Machinery Foundation Inc · Joe C Davis Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · AT&T Foundation · Chattanooga Christian Community 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 The Ayers Foundation Trust 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.