· Private foundation
The Joel C & Bernice W Gordon Family 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $205k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ABE'S GARDEN | $75,000 |
| FRIST ART MUSEUM | $48,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF NASHVILLE | $47,800 |
| THE TEMPLE | $30,180 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER NASHVILLE | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $24,000 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $12,500 |
| GORDON JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER | $12,260 |
| TENNESSEE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | $9,000 |
| THE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE | $7,500 |
| ENSWORTH SCHOOL | $6,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | $5,000 |
| LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE | $2,500 |
| WATER WALKERS | $2,500 |
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 (FY19–25, $239k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
65 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 48 since wound down; 9 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
FRIST ART MUSEUM7× · 2019–2025 · $280k · revenue +19%- JCJEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF NASHVILLE7× · 2019–2025 · $237k · revenue +19%
- UWUNITED WAY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC5× · 2019–2025 · $190k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKYone grant, 2021 · $100k
- UWUNITED WAYone grant, 2021 · $50k
- SGSAINT GEORGE'S EPISCOPAL CHURCHone 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.
Nashville bar association is organized to improve the practice of law through education, service & fellowship
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
Ntc mission is to advance the diverse technology ecosystem by connecting and promoting members, attracting, growing and retaining tech talent, and providing opportunities to reinvest in the greater nashville community.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The nashville chamber public benefit foundation supports the work of the nashville area chamber of commerce through efforts to improve the quality of education, encourage public and private efforts around education, and to facilitate the…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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…
Our mission is to serve our members through education, professionalism, and legislative involvement
Nashville banner is a locally owned, community supported, civic news organization. we exist to empower the people of nashville to make informed decisions by providing non-partisan journalism from an independent, nonprofit newsroom. we are…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The nashville area chamber of commerce facilitates community leadership to create economic prosperity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Centennial Park Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is The Benjamin Foundation Dba Garbett Family 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 36 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) — 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 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.
60 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. 60 of the 138 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF NASHVILLE AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds ABE'S GARDEN ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER (TPAC) MANAGEMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA 560 MIDDLE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ENSWORTH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SCOTT HAMILTON CARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP NASHVILLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds OZ ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Bowdoin College ↗
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: Memorial Foundation Inc · Hca Healthcare Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Frist Foundation · The Blum Family Foundation · The Annette & Irwin Eskind Family Foundation · Msb Cockayne Fund Inc · Doochin Family Charitable Foundation · The Danner Foundation · The Wade-Buntin Family 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 Joel C & Bernice W Gordon 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.
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 Joel C & Bernice W Gordon Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Joel C & Bernice W Gordon 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.