· Private foundation
The Joel R Anderson 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 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 $10k11 grants · $43k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $279k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $216k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| UNA FOUNDATION | $66,000 |
| BEAR CREEK COLLABORATIVE | $44,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF NORTHWEST ALABAMA | $33,000 |
| SHOALS COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES (CASA) | $30,000 |
| SHOALS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $30,000 |
| SHOALS DREAM CENTER | $27,000 |
| WILLIAM PORTER FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| CARING PLACE | $25,000 |
| SHOALS COMMUNITY CLINIC | $15,000 |
| ALABAMA KIDNEY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| LAND TRUST OF NORTH ALABAMA | $10,000 |
| LIFTED SPIRITS GARAGE | $10,000 |
| NORTHWEST ALABAMA SPAY AND NEUTER ASSISTANCE (NASANA) | $10,000 |
| BIG BROTHER BIG SISTER OF THE SHOALS | $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, $66k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +5% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 24 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $202k 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
- SSSHOALS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA5× · 2021–2025 · $140k · revenue +35%
- SRSINGING RIVER TRAIL2× · 2022–2024 · $125k · revenue ×17
- FBFood Bank of North Alabama Inc2× · 2023–2024 · $93k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- SMSHOALS MOUNTAIN BIKE CLUBone grant, 2022 · $25k
- PAPETS ARE WORTH SAVING INCone grant, 2024 · $20k · revenue -12%
FILM INDEPENDENTone grant, 2024 · $20k · revenue 0%
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.
Preserve the history of shelby county al
To help strays and unwanted family pets find loving and responsible homes and to educate the public regarding the problem of pet overpopulation and the importance of spaying and neutering their pets.
Randolph county animal shelter was established to provide shelter for the homeless animals of randolph county alabama.
To promote the common interest of those involved in the development & management of rural multi-family housing.
Animal welfare and care
Rescue Dogs from Alabama
To preserve, archive, and curate audio, visual and tangible materials related to music written or recorded in and around muscle shoals, alabama, as well as mucic performed by musicians from that same geographical area.
The Alabama Animal Alliance, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to ending companion animal overpopulation by providing low cost, high quality spay and neuter services.
To provide the coordination of community agencies and to engage in fundraising efforts to effectively reduce homelessness on north alabama for children, adults and families
Strengthens families and serve sexual assault victims
To provide decent, safe, and affordable housing to very low, low, and moderate income residents in northport, alabama.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Shoals Dream Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Riverhill School. 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 22 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 19% of your grantees by number, and just 15% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 73 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 RIVERHILL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Bear Creek Collaborative ↗
- Who funds University of South Florida Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SHOALS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds SINGING RIVER TRAIL ↗
- Who funds CRAMER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of North Alabama Inc ↗
- Who funds SHOALS DREAM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Northwest Alabama ↗
- Who funds SHOALS AREA CHAMBER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHOALS COMMUNITY CLINIC ↗
- Who funds THE WEBB SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ONE PLACE OF THE SHOALS INC ↗
- Who funds Home Free Haven Inc ↗
- Who funds RIVERHILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST ALABAMA READING AIDES INC ↗
- Who funds Alabama Kidney Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds HASRA INC ↗
- Who funds KRUZN FOR A KURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSCLE SHOALS SONGWRITERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PETS ARE WORTH SAVING INC ↗
- Who funds FILM INDEPENDENT ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN FLORENCE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BRAIN TUMOR SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RENEWED SPIRITS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON GROUND SHOALS INC ↗
- Who funds CHLOESFUNDLIMITED ↗
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 Long Lewis Foundation · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Community Foundation of Greater Huntsville · Publix Super Markets Charities Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Network for Good · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 R Anderson 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 R Anderson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Joel R Anderson 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.