· Private foundation
The Gratitude 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 $10k2 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $275k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAHABA RIVER COALITION | $30,000 |
| SPACE ONE ELEVEN | $30,000 |
| CAMP MCDOWELL | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| COOSA RIVERKEEPER | $25,000 |
| ALABAMA ARISE | $25,000 |
| WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA | $20,000 |
| A PLUS EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP | $15,000 |
| VOICES FOR ALABAMA'S CHILDREN | $15,000 |
| PRESCHOOL PARTNERS | $15,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY IN ALABAMA | $15,000 |
| PUBLIC RADIO WBHM 903 FM | $10,000 |
| STATES NEWSROOM | $10,000 |
| ALABAMA SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS | $10,000 |
| ALABAMA ASSOCIATION FOR NONPROFITS | $7,000 |
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 (FY17–18, $24k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 6 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $97k 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
- SOSPACE ONE ELEVEN INC9× · 2017–2025 · $220k · revenue +42%
- CRCahaba River Society Inc7× · 2018–2024 · $125k · revenue +66%
- FLFRESHWATER LAND TRUST7× · 2017–2024 · $118k · revenue +136%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $50k
- YWYOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSN OF BIRMINGHAMone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue -1%
- AEA EDUCATIONone grant, 2020 · $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.
Alabama Rivers Alliance is a statewide network of groups working to protect and restore all of Alabama's water resources through building partnerships, empowering citizens, and advocating for sound water policy and its enforcement.
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 promote the preservation and continued development of commercial banking in alabama.
Coordinate rc&d activity in alabama
The alabama alliance netowrk works to strengthen and enhance alabama's civic society through research, education, and grantmaking
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.
A nonpartisan grassroots communication organization that works to raise awareness and increase engagement around community issues in alabama by working directly with civic organizations advocating civic participation in communities across…
To advocate for and provide educational opportunitiesin the arts
The mission of ACLCE is to prepare youth to become active, engaged, and informed participants in a democratic society.
Aids alabama devotes its energy and resources statewide to helping people with hiv/aids live healthy, independent lives and works to prevent the spread of hiv.
The alabama best practices center helps teachers and administrators develop the competence, commitment and courage to do whatever it takes to improve student learning.
To improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of the community
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stair of Birmingham and the most unlike its peers is Railroad Park Foundation. 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 28 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 16% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 53 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 SPACE ONE ELEVEN INC ↗
- Who funds Cahaba River Society Inc ↗
- Who funds FRESHWATER LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY CRISTO REY CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA ARISE ACTION ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA ARISE ↗
- Who funds BLACK BELT TREASURES ↗
- Who funds THE A EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds PRESCHOOL PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds VOICES for Alabama's Children ↗
- Who funds RED MOUNTAIN THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER BIRMINGHAM ARTS EDUCATION COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds STUDIO BY THE TRACKS INC ↗
- Who funds Oasis Counseling for Women and Children ↗
- Who funds BLACK WARRIOR RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds RAILROAD PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COOSA RIVERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds WILD ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds STAIR OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds Impact America ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSN OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds THE BELL CENTER FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMS ↗
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 · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Protective Life Foundation · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Altecstyslinger Foundation · The Maynard Nexsen Foundation · Stephens 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 Gratitude 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 Gratitude Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Gratitude 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.