· Private foundation
The Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k34 grants · $623k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $608k
- $250k+1 grant · $650k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE FOUNDATION INC | $650,000 |
| EMMANUEL CENTER INC | $150,000 |
| KNOWLEDGE QUEST | $105,000 |
| MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART INC | $102,500 |
| THE WORKS INC | $100,000 |
| CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MEMPHIS | $50,000 |
| ADVANCE MEMPHIS | $50,000 |
| URBAN RENAISSANCE PARTNERS INC | $50,000 |
| SOULSVILLE CHARTER SCHOOL | $32,000 |
| MEMPHIS DELTA PREPARATORY CHARTER SCHOOL INC | $30,000 |
| LEMOYNE-OWEN COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| VISIBLE MUSIC COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| SOULSVILLE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| INNOVATE MEMPHIS | $25,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $545k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
89 repeat relationships — 40 still active in FY2024, 49 since wound down; 13 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, 56% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $821k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION7× · 2018–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +36%
- BMBAPTIST MEMORIAL HEALTH CARE FOUNDATION INC5× · 2018–2022 · $628k · revenue +11%
- CBCHRISTIAN BROTHERS UNIVERSITY7× · 2018–2024 · $425k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- JAJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF MEMPHIS AND THE MID-SOUTH INCone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +7%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $100k
- MMMEMPHIS MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE & HISTORYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $75k · revenue +64%
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 produce lifelong learners, critical thinkers, effective communicators, and productive members of the global community
Memphis tomorrow is an association of ceos of memphis' largest businesses working to promote opportunity and quality of life for all memphians through collective action and public-private partnerships.
To produce plays and encourage the arts by performance and educational programs.
Assist private development projects
To serve our members and partners by improving the quality of life through regional economic prosperity.
Memphis recovery centers, inc. (mrc) provides compassionate treatment services for youth and adults suffering from substance addiction and co-occurring disorders, utilizing professional methods to improve spiritual, physical, emotional,…
To enrich the lives of the developmentally challenged by meeting their social, recreational and continuing educational needs.
To prepare young ladies and gentlemen for college success within a highly-structured, nurturing, christian environment.
To enable and empower african-americans and other minorities in underserved communities to achieve their highest human potential and secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights.
Reach memphis helps high achieving students from shelby county public schools succeed in high school, college and beyond using a continuum of services including summer educational experiences, college readiness planning and counseling, and…
Memphis merit academy charter school prepares kindergarten through 8th-grade students in memphis for success in high school, college, and life by providing rigorous academics, high-quality instruction, and character development in a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rise Memphis Inc and the most unlike its peers is Protect Our Aquifer. 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 27 years old; the field is 62. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 14% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
133 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. 133 of the 161 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 UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BAPTIST MEMORIAL HEALTH CARE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN BROTHERS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds VISIBLE MUSIC COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Crosstown Arts ↗
- Who funds WOLF RIVER CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS-SHELBY COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS BRIDGE LIGHTING INC ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF MEMPHIS AND THE MID-SOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds The Works Inc ↗
- Who funds SHELBY FARMS PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Inc ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS DELTA PREPARATORY CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds KNOWLEDGE QUEST INC ↗
- Who funds Rhodes College ↗
- Who funds EMMANUEL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE MEMPHIS ↗
- Who funds SOULSVILLE CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS TEACHER RESIDENCY INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds Service Over Self Inc ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER ODYSSEY ↗
- Who funds THE PORTER-LEATH HOME ↗
- Who funds LET'S INNOVATE THROUGH EDUCATION DBA LIT ↗
- Who funds FOR THE KINGDOM INC ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE & HISTORY ↗
- Who funds PURE YOUTH ATHLETICS ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE HUTCHISON SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BRIARCREST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds RISE MEMPHIS 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: Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Thomas W Briggs Foundation Inc · Jr Hyde III Family Foundation · The Urban Child Institute · The Assisi Foundation of Memphis Inc · United Way of the Mid South · Crews Family Foundation · Plough Foundation · Slingshot Memphis Inc · Thomas Garrott Foundation · Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis
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 Kemmons Wilson 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
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 Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kemmons Wilson 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.