· Private foundation
The Melkus Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k17 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $526k
- $50k–250k20 grants · $2.2M
- $250k+10 grants · $4.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $1,000,000 |
| BELMONT UNIVERSITY | $989,184 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $500,000 |
| ANCORA TN | $400,000 |
| CITY HARVEST | $300,000 |
| MARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER | $294,940 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF COLLIER COUNTY | $270,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $250,000 |
| RENEWAL HOUSE | $250,000 |
| NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL | $250,000 |
| CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY | $214,534 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $200,000 |
| MANNA FOOD BANK INC | $200,000 |
| SEXUAL ASSAULT CENTER | $200,000 |
| CARE INC | $200,000 |
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, $3.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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.
78 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 20 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.7M 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
- IRInternational Rescue Committee INC4× · 2020–2024 · $3.9M · revenue +63%
CITY HARVEST INC5× · 2020–2024 · $2.4M · revenue +3%- MOMARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER INC4× · 2020–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +45%
Funded once
- RIROOM IN THE INN INCone grant, 2020 · $75k
THE DOE FUND INCone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +4%- FCFAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +192%
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 nashville food project brings people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food, with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our city.
Tirrc is a statewide, immigrant and refugee-led collaboration. our mission is to build power, amplify our voices, and organize communities to advocate for our rights. our vision is a stronger, more inclusive tennessee where people of all…
Lead our community's efforts to house, support, empower and advocate for families experiencing homelessness.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
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.
Bloodwater mission, inc. (the organization) is a not-for-profit organization registered in nashville, tennessee that operates an international nonprofit that partners with african community-driven organizations to end water and hiv/aids…
To be a successful physician led, professionally managed medical practice that benefits our patients and our community, while supporting the UT Health Science Center's mission through clinical excellence, financial responsibility and a…
Roane County 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.
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
Our mission: to improve the quality of health care.our vision: better health care. better choices. better health.
Methodist le bonheur healthcare, in partnership with its medical staffs, will collaborate with patients and their families to be the leader in providing high quality, cost-effective patient-and family-centered care. services will be…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nashville Rescue Mission and the most unlike its peers is Jake Owen 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 31 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) — 5% 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.
85 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. 85 of the 136 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 International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds COLLIER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Belmont University ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds ANCORATN FKA END SLAVERY TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds SEXUAL ASSAULT CENTER ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE JUSTICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RENEWAL HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds SANCTUARY FOR FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE HARPETH HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE ADDIS CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds KIPP NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds MANNA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SOUTH CENTRAL KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds THE FAMILY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE INNOCENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PENCIL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL SNOW LEOPARD TRUST ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CITIZENS INC ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEANS FOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY ↗
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: Hca Healthcare Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · The Frist Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Dettwiller Foundation · Joe C Davis Foundation · The Steven & Laurie Eskind Family Foundation · The Annette & Irwin Eskind Family Foundation · The Healing Trust Formerly Baptist Healing Hospital Trust · Nashville Predators 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 Melkus 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.
- Ellie Fund Inc — 15% of income from government
- Arlington Eats Inc — 6% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Gulfshore Playhouse Inc — 0% 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.