· Private foundation
The Columbus Phipps Foundation
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k39 grants · $145k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $423k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $497k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MOUNTAIN EMPIRE COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $193,750 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VA COLLEGE AT WISE | $183,500 |
| LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY | $60,000 |
| APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF PHARMACY | $60,000 |
| EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY | $44,500 |
| RIDGEVIEW HIGH SCHOOL | $38,650 |
| ANTIGUA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $30,000 |
| KENTUCKY COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $30,000 |
| CAMPBELLSVILLE UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| GALEN COLLEGE OF NURSING | $29,000 |
| DICKENSON COUNTY VA COOPERATIVE EXT | $27,125 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| LIBERTY UNIVERSITY | $23,000 |
| SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $20,500 |
| DICKENSON COUNTY SOCIAL SERVICES | $20,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 96% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +10% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
95 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2025, 49 since wound down; 16 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $142k 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
- LULIBERTY UNIVERSITY INC6× · 2020–2025 · $233k · revenue +44%
- LMLINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY6× · 2020–2025 · $231k · revenue +67%
- BUBLUEFIELD UNIVERSITY6× · 2020–2025 · $61k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $177k
- ASAPPALACHIA SCHOOL OF PHARMACYone grant, 2020 · $40k
- EVEDWARD VIA COLLEGE OFone grant, 2021 · $25k
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 mission of the University is to inspire independent thinkers who become trustworthy, effective leaders that shape caring communities. The vision of the University of Lynchburg is to cultivate a world that is innovative, authentic, and…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Education - lagrange college challenges the minds and inspires the souls of its students. founded in 1831 and committed to its relationship with the united methodist church and its wesleyan and liberal arts traditions, the college supports…
Coker university is a student-centered, comprehensive university. it is dedicated to providing every student an academic curriculum based upon a uniformly excellent liberal arts core that enhances the structured development of key personal…
Since 1902, Franklin University has been a pioneer in meeting the needs of adult students who have the ambition to continue their education in combination with other responsibilities, receiving its status as a tax exempt organization in…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
John brown university (jbu) provides christ-centered education that prepares students to honor god and serve others by developing their intellectual, spiritual, and professional lives. (continued on schedule o)jbu serves traditional…
Virginia wesleyan university is a fully accredited liberal arts, united-methodist related institution founded in 1961.
Regent University serves as a center of Christian thought and action to provide excellent education through a Biblical perspective and global context equipping Christian leaders to change the world.
Greenville college d/b/a greenville university empowers students for lives of character and service through a transforming christ-centered education in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional studies.
Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Campbellsville University Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dickenson County Food Bank. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 71 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 162 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 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds KING UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ST MARYS HEALTH WAGON INC ↗
- Who funds BLUEFIELD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FERRUM COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Campbellsville University Inc ↗
- Who funds HAMPDEN-SYDNEY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PIKEVILLE ↗
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: Tua Blankenshipjustice Mem Sch Fnd Xxx-Xx-Xxxx · Council of Independent Colleges · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation Inc · Tulsa Community Foundation · The United Company Foundation · East Tennessee Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · Folds of Honor Foundation · Hughes Memorial Home · Wellmont Health System · Thompson Charitable 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 Columbus Phipps 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.