· Private foundation
The Norman & Emmy Lou Illges 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 $10k2 grants · $7k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHERN DOCUMENTARY FUND | $25,000 |
| MORE LIGHT INC | $25,000 |
| EMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER | $10,000 |
| PISGAH LEGAL SERVICES | $10,000 |
| ASHEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL BAND ASSOC | $5,150 |
| CULTIVATE PASTORS & CHURCHES INC | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $91k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 49% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 35% of The Norman & Emmy Lou Illges Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 50% of the giving stays in GA; read by stated purpose it is 46% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
10 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 4 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, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $62k 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
- LPLA PAZ DE DIOS INC2× · 2019–2020 · $45k · revenue +13%
- ETEMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER3× · 2020–2025 · $35k · revenue +106%
- HDHIGHLANDS DAY SCHOOL FOUNDATION2× · 2019–2020 · $30k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- AFA FAMILY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $2.7M · revenue -96%
- REROBERT E REED RESEARCH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $70k
- NHNEW HORIZON COMMUNITY THEATRE INCone grant, 2019 · $35k · revenue -7% · 27% of their budget
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.
Deep south today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms comprising mississippi today and verite news. with its regional scale and scope, deep south today is providing critical journalism in underserved areas and ensuring its long-term…
Inspiring philanthropy and strengthening our region through innovative community initiatives and quality services to donors and constituents.
Chattanooga design studio seeks to elevate the quality of life for all citizens through guidance, collaboration, innovation, and education that promotes livable, accessible, walkable, and humane urban design.
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
At community action coalition for south central wisconsin, inc. (cac) our mission is to transform our communities by fostering conditions where everyone can achieve social and economic security. cac exists to push back on poverty. our…
To enhance the quality of life for the people of the west georgia area.
We inspire people to enjoy, value and protect the wild character and natural legacy of the South.
To provide high-quality musical presentations and educational programs in the chattanooga area
Georgia Interfaith Power and Light (GIPL) inspires and equips communities of faith to organize, implement practical climate solutions, and advocate across Georgia on issues of climate change, environmental justice, and community resilience.
Provides mediation services and mediation training for all manner of disputes, private and public, without the need for formal audication through the court system.
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
Cine enriches the quality of life in Athens, GA and the surrounding region by presenting film and arts that inspire, educate and sustainably build community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc and the most unlike its peers is A Family 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 23 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 59 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 A FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds NOLA MICRO SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds LA PAZ DE DIOS INC ↗
- Who funds NEW HORIZON COMMUNITY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds EMMETT TILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER ↗
- Who funds AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY REAL ESTATE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDS DAY SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds 4point0 Schools ↗
- Who funds Asheville High School Band Association ↗
- Who funds NEW ORLEANS SPONSORING COMMITTEE -TOGETHER NEW ORLEANS ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN DOCUMENTARY FUND ↗
- Who funds Revival School Saint Louis ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMBUS BOTANICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds Champions Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Girls Incorporated of Columbus and Phenix-Russell ↗
- Who funds FRESHWATER LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds PASTORAL INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds REBUILDING TOGETHER NEW ORLEANS ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FUND OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGANS IN ACTION FOR LOVE EQUALITY AND BENEVOLENCE ↗
- Who funds THE ECHO PROJECT ↗
- Who funds GROWING KINGS INC ↗
- Who funds ATLAS Ministry Inc ↗
- Who funds PISGAH LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds US Biennial Inc ↗
- Who funds MERCYMED OF COLUMBUS INC ATTN TONY NGUYEN ↗
- Who funds ST MARY'S GOOD SAMARITAN HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF GREATER COLUMBUS INC ↗
- Who funds REWIRING AMERICA ↗
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: Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley Inc · The Jordan Foundation Inc · Lockwood Partners Foundation Inc · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · Mildred Miller Fort Foundation Inc · Jw & Ethel I Woodruff Foundation Inc · Richard and Helen Robbins Family Foundation Inc · Bradley-Turner Foundation Inc · Benwood Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · The Walter Alan Richards Foundation · Jackson-Burgin Foundation 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 Norman & Emmy Lou Illges 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 Norman & Emmy Lou Illges Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Norman & Emmy Lou Illges 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.