· Private foundation
The Comer 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $83k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $301k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $592k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Auburn University | $228,000 |
| University of Alabama | $155,000 |
| University of Alabama at Birmingham | $147,000 |
| Scholarship America | $61,840 |
| Wallace State Community College | $43,874 |
| Alabama Ballet | $37,500 |
| Birmingham Musuem of Art | $37,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $29,500 |
| BB Comer Memorial Library | $26,000 |
| Better Basics | $20,000 |
| STAIR | $15,000 |
| Sidewalk Film Center | $15,000 |
| I3 Academy | $12,000 |
| Maranatha FLC and Academy | $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 (FY22–25, $23k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 31% 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.
36 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 10 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k 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
- TSTHE STATE OF ALABAMA BALLET INC9× · 2017–2025 · $300k · revenue +31%
- SOSTAIR OF BIRMINGHAM9× · 2017–2025 · $170k · revenue +88%
- BBBETTER BASICS INC8× · 2018–2025 · $166k · revenue +149%
Funded once
- UOUniversity of Montevalloone grant, 2018 · $12k
- GSGirl Scoutsone grant, 2017 · $10k
- MCMcWane Centerone grant, 2021 · $5k
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 support the university of alabama at birmingham in its scientific and educational mission, including managing and disbursing funds, acquiring real property, and providing operational flexibility.
To work in partnership with families and organizations to ensure that all alabama children (birth to five) get everything they need to develop to their fullest potential.
The alabama best practices center helps teachers and administrators develop the competence, commitment and courage to do whatever it takes to improve student learning.
Birmingham Promise supports and prepares every Birmingham City School student in achieving economic security, mobility, and prosperity by providing connections to high-quality work experiences and last-dollar tuition scholarships
To promote the preservation and continued development of commercial banking in alabama.
The mission of ACLCE is to prepare youth to become active, engaged, and informed participants in a democratic society.
To advocate for and provide educational opportunitiesin the arts
Match adult volunteers with at-risk children. To promote a friendship which will build confidence and self-esteem in order to promote improved decision-making and reduce problems into adulthood.
The Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
A statewide trade association which serves as a resource through which its electric cooperative members are provided services for the continuation and advancement of the rural electrification program in Alabama.
To ensure success for our children in the global community, the mission of sullins academy is to provide a positive educational environment, fostering academic excellence while maintaining a commitment to the core values of integrity,…
To promote the value of using a realtor and to enhance our members' opportunities to serve customers in a professional, ethical and profitable manner within an environment that fosters cooperation among the membership.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stair of Birmingham and the most unlike its peers is Bluff City Arts Alliance. 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 32 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 52 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 STATE OF ALABAMA BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds STAIR OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BETTER BASICS INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds Birmingham Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds PRESCHOOL PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds THE EXCEPTIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds I3 ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SMILE-A-MILE ↗
- Who funds MITCHELL'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds VULCAN PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cahaba Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Special Equestrians Inc ↗
- Who funds THE A EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds FIRST LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds STUDIO BY THE TRACKS 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: The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Protective Life Foundation · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Altecstyslinger Foundation · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Orlean & Ralph W Beeson Fund
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 Comer 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Comer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Comer 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.