· Private foundation
The Joseph & Lynn May Foundation
Its FY2018 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 FY2017–2018.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2018
- Under $10k37 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION | $11,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $8,500 |
| CONGREGATION MICAH | $3,705 |
| MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY | $3,100 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $3,000 |
| TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE | $2,400 |
| ANDREW JACKSON FOUNDATION | $1,431 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $1,200 |
| FRIENDS OF WARNER PARKS | $1,100 |
| THE CONSERVANCY PARTHENON CENTENNIAL PARK | $1,000 |
| CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL | $1,000 |
| HUDSON INTITUTE | $1,000 |
| FRIST CENTER FOR THE VISUAL ARTS | $1,000 |
| WATKINS COLLEGE OF ART | $1,000 |
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, $400) 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.
18 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2018, 0 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (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 FY2018, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
- MBMONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE2× · 2017–2018 · $5k · revenue +6%
- USUNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE2× · 2017–2018 · $4k · revenue +37%
- AJANDREW JACKSON FOUNDATION FKA LADIES' HERMITAGE ASSOCIATION2× · 2017–2018 · $2k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- BSBLAIR SCHOOL OF MUSIC VANDERBILT UNIVERSITYone grant, 2017 · $3k
- NSNashville Symphony Associationgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +29%
- TLTHE LUKE SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $1k · revenue +52%
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 public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
In fulfillment of our mission to inspire a culture of understanding and discovery of our natural world through conservation, innovation and leadership, our goal is to build a first class zoo for middle tennessee and to develop a facility…
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.
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
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.
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Methodist Medical Center provides quality healthcare, in alignment with Covenant Health's mission to serve the community by improving the quality of life through better health regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Centennial Park Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is Cystic Fibrosis 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 52 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 65 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 MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds ANDREW JACKSON FOUNDATION FKA LADIES' HERMITAGE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Hudson Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds OAK HILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WARNER PARKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE LUKE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MEHARRY MEDICAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CENTENNIAL PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Bal d Hiver Benefit Inc ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE BALLET ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Emory University ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds ALIVE HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds KAPPA ALPHA THETA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
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 Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Wade-Buntin Family Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · Enchiridion Foundation · The Frist Foundation · Dettwiller Foundation · Ebs Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Doochin Family Charitable Foundation · Hca Healthcare Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment 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 Joseph & Lynn May 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.