· Private foundation
The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $387k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE BELL CENTER FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMS | $100,000 |
| AUBURN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF ALABAMA | $25,000 |
| YOUTHSERVE | $25,000 |
| FOUNDATIONS EARLY LEARNING AND FAMILY CENTER | $20,000 |
| BIRMINGHAM TALKS | $15,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $15,000 |
| WOOLEY INSTITUE FOR SPOKEN LANGUAGE | $15,000 |
| HICA | $13,000 |
| M-POWER MINISTRIES | $12,500 |
| ONE PLACE METRO FAMILY JUSTICE CENTER | $12,000 |
| AG GASTON BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $12,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,000 |
| THE WELLHOUSE | $11,000 |
| MCWANE SCIENCE CENTER | $10,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $355k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 95% 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 +30% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 36 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $84k 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
YOUTHSERVE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $200k · revenue +30%- MMM-POWER Ministries7× · 2017–2024 · $82k · revenue +48%
- BBBETTER BASICS INC5× · 2018–2023 · $61k · revenue +149%
Funded once
- TCThe Children's Hospital of Alabamaone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +9%
- WCWOODLAWN COMMUNITY CHARTER SCHOOL (I3 ACADEMY)one grant, 2021 · $25k
- LSLegacy Schoolsgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +203%
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 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 Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
Shelby County Children's Advocacy Center, Inc. is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to ending child abuse through education, advocacy, counseling, family support, and the pursuit of justice.
The mission of ACLCE is to prepare youth to become active, engaged, and informed participants in a democratic society.
The alabama alliance netowrk works to strengthen and enhance alabama's civic society through research, education, and grantmaking
Coordinate rc&d activity in alabama
Assistance to homeless and needy persons.
To serve people, build community, pursue justice.
The alabama best practices center helps teachers and administrators develop the competence, commitment and courage to do whatever it takes to improve student learning.
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.
Encourage and enhance advocacy and family support services on behalf of individuals suffering from mental illness.
Nurturing hope, encouraging health, and promoting healing in troubled families through community collaboration, communication and cooperation
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stair of Birmingham and the most unlike its peers is College Admissions Made Possible. 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 30 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
101 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. 101 of the 129 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 BELL CENTER FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMS ↗
- Who funds YOUTHSERVE INC ↗
- Who funds AUBURN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Children's Hospital of Alabama ↗
- Who funds M-POWER Ministries ↗
- Who funds BETTER BASICS INC ↗
- Who funds STAIR OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds A G GASTON BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB ↗
- Who funds RAILROAD PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KID ONE TRANSPORT SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF CENTRAL ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds COLLAT JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds LITERACY COUNCIL OF CENTRAL ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN DIABETES EDUCATION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAKTHROUGH COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds SPACE ONE ELEVEN INC ↗
- Who funds MCWANE SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Birmingham Zoo Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATIONS EARLY LEARNING AND FAMILY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SMALL MAGIC ↗
- Who funds Cahaba River Society Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSN OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA HOLOCAUST EDUCATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds SMILE-A-MILE ↗
- Who funds THE WELLHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds RED MOUNTAIN THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds PRESCHOOL PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds THE STATE OF ALABAMA BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds Childrens Dance Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE SOCIETY OF ST ANDREW INC ↗
- Who funds Gateway ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDRY MINISTRIES 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 · Protective Life Foundation · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Orlean & Ralph W Beeson Fund · Altecstyslinger Foundation · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · Junior League of Birmingham 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 Joseph S Bruno Charitable 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 Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Joseph S Bruno Charitable 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.