· Private foundation
The Clayton Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
90% of The Clayton Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 32 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The Clayton Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 39 organizations, $1M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k34 grants · $91k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $145k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $588k
- $250k+1 grant · $255k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER KNOXVILLE | $255,000 |
| KNOXVILLE MUSEUM OF ART | $100,000 |
| EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF KNOXVILLE | $100,000 |
| KNOX EDUCATION FOUNDATON | $100,000 |
| TN STATE COLLAB ON REFORMING EDUC | $75,000 |
| KNOXVILLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $62,500 |
| MOTLOW COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| HORATIO ALGER ASSOCIATION | $50,000 |
| PELLISSIPPI STATE COMM COLLEGE FDN | $50,000 |
| YWCA | $35,000 |
| GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN COUNCIL BSA | $25,000 |
| WEBB SCHOOL OF KNOXVILLE | $21,750 |
| MUSE KNOXVILLE | $20,000 |
| KNOXVILLE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS INC | $13,000 |
| KNOXVILLE BOTANICAL GARDENS | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 21% 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.
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.
59 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2022, 22 since wound down; 31 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- KMKNOXVILLE MUSEUM OF ART5× · 2020–2024 · $503k · revenue +36%
- ESEPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF KNOXVILLE5× · 2020–2024 · $500k · revenue +70%
- TSTENNESSEE STATE COLLABORATIVE ON REFORMING EDUCATION5× · 2020–2024 · $375k · revenue +91%
Funded once
- CCCLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $25k
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TENNESSEE VALLone grant, 2021 · $24k · revenue +7%
- PCPARKWEST CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $10k
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 academy serves as the local medica society for physicians of knox county and surrounding counties in east tennessee. its purpose is to afford a medium for free discussion and exchange of ideas among physicians.
To provide no-cost health care to families who have no insurance and do not qualify for the states low income insurance program.
Knoxville botanical gardens and arboretum provides and maintains gardens for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public.
Educate preschool through twelfth grade children in a Christian environment while developing them spiritually,academically, emotionally, and physically with Jesus Christ as their standard and the Bible as their foundation.
Knoxville college is a private, church related coeducational liberal arts institution. the college is open to students of diverse backgrounds and cultures who seek a quality liberal arts education.
To provide financial support for the knoxville museum of art.
Providing art exhibits and education to southwest virginia and northeast tennessee
To hold, maintain, renovate and improve certain real property known as the historic tennessee theatre located in knoxville tennessee, in order to provide a performing arts venue for the community and other entities for historic and…
To provide affordable housing to low and moderate income persons in east tennessee through first-time homebuyer education; assist with mortgage loans, downpayments, and closing costs; build new single family housing; develop multi-family…
To cultivate healthy communities by supporting relationships between local farmers, producers, and the public.
Knoxville panther scholarship foundation was created to provide a means for the knoxville community to provide academic support and financial aid to students of the community to further their education.
Nashville public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Leadership Knoxville Inc and the most unlike its peers is Empty Stocking Fund Formerly Bgl 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 40 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
71 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. 71 of the 114 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER KNOXVILLEINC ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE SCIENCE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF KNOXVILLE ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE STATE COLLABORATIVE ON REFORMING EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds MARYVILLE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds KNOX EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MUSE KNOXVILLE ↗
- Who funds MOTLOW COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HORATIO ALGER ASSN OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds BLOUNT COUNTY CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF EAST TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds WEBB SCHOOL OF KNOXVILLE ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds PELLISSIPPI STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Knoxville Childrens Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds EMPTY STOCKING FUND FORMERLY BGL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EAST TENNESSEE COMMUNITY DESIGN CENTER ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TENNESSEE VALL ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP KNOXVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds BRYANTS BRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds SMOKY MOUNTAIN ANIMAL CARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE MONTESSORI ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS INSTITUTE 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: Haslam Family Foundation Inc · East Tennessee Foundation · The Clayton Homes Foundation · Stowers Machinery Foundation Inc · The Boyd Foundation · Bill and Crissy Haslam Foundation · University Health System Inc · Lawson Family Foundation · Thompson Charitable Foundation · The Melrose Foundation · Akima Club Inc · The Aslan 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 Clayton Family 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.
- Guadalupe Center Inc — 0% 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 Clayton Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Clayton Family 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.