· Private foundation
The Bower 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $389k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $996k
- $250k+9 grants · $3.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTER FOR MISSISSIPPI HEALTH POLIC | $902,195 |
| CONVERGE | $500,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI | $449,947 |
| MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDA | $345,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI | $339,000 |
| COPIAH-LINCOLN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FN | $315,880 |
| MHA HEALTH RESEARCH AND EDUCATION | $312,836 |
| Individual grant recipient | $311,448 |
| MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN | $250,000 |
| PHI THETA KAPPA FOUNDATION | $232,000 |
| SINGING RIVER HEALTH SYSTEMS | $216,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI | $139,243 |
| MS GULF COAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $101,000 |
| MS PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION | $97,500 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 22%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 97% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of The Bower Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 96% of the giving stays in MS; read by stated purpose it is 89% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +30% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 7 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $817k 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
BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER CORPORATION5× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +38%- CICONVERGE INC4× · 2021–2025 · $867k · revenue ×14
- DSDEEP SOUTH TODAY2× · 2023–2024 · $753k · revenue +55%
Funded once
- MSMAGNOLIA SPEECH SCHOOLone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -30%
- MNMISSISSIPPI NEWS INFORMATION CORPone grant, 2021 · $229k
- EMEAST MS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATIone grant, 2023 · $44k
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.
The organization provides funding for medical research, educational programs for physicians and others as well as educational assistance for medical students. in addition, the organization provides grants to medical professionals whose…
Support the research activities of the university of mississippi medical center
Health care foundation of north mississippi is operated exclusively for the purpose of raising, receiving, and administering funds (for medical, scientific, educational and charitable purposes), to assist hospital and non-profit…
North mississippi medical center (nmmc) is a 650-bed regional referral center in tupelo, ms. nmmc serves more than 700,000 people in 24 counties in north mississippi, northwest alabama and portions of tennessee. nmmc is the largest…
Central mississippi health services is dedicated to improving healthcare access and eliminating health disparities within the communities we serve by providing access to quality primary and tertiary healthcare services in an environment…
North mississippi medical clinics, inc. (clinics) owns and operates 34 primary care and internal medicine clinics, all primarily within north mississippi and northwest alabama. clinics is part of the north mississippi health services…
Mcphs university prepares students for careers in health care through teaching, scholarship, research, professional service and community engagement.
To advance the field of health for the public good.
The organization provides family centered, community oriented and comprehensive health services to the people in mound bayou, ms and the surrounding area.
The mission of the foundation is to inspire donors to invest in the lsu health sciences center - new orleans ("hsc-no") and its future, to properly steward those contributions, and to help meet the ever evolving needs of the lsuhsc-no by…
Mississippi college is a private, co-educational, comprehensive university of liberal arts and sciences and professional studies dedicated to the pursuit of academic excellence. founded in 1826, mississippi college is the oldest…
Our mission is to be the leading advocate for our member physicians, their patients and our community, in promoting the highest standards of ethical medical practice, access to quality medical care, medical education, research, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mississippi Public Health Institute and the most unlike its peers is Inspire Health Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 50 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 CENTER FOR MISSISSIPPI HEALTHPOLICY ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF MISSISSIPPI ↗
- Who funds BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds INSPIRE HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds CONVERGE INC ↗
- Who funds DEEP SOUTH TODAY ↗
- Who funds PHI THETA KAPPA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MAGNOLIA SPEECH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI COMMUNITY COLLEGE DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HINDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JACKSON FREE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ITAWAMBA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION 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: WK Kellogg Foundation · Mississippi Community College Foundation · 2nd Chance Ms · Community Foundation for Mississippi · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Bower 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.
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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 The Bower Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bower 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.