· Private foundation
The Palmer Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k60 grants · $208k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHERN STAIRS | $50,000 |
| BRIGHT HOPE INTERNATIONAL | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL CHRISITAN FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HEART CHANGE MINISTRIES | $10,000 |
| THE ADVANCEMENT CENTER FOR WASHINGTON TWSP SCHOOLS AND NORTH CENTRAL ALUMNI | $9,000 |
| YOUNG LIFE | $9,000 |
| BETHEL CHURCH | $9,000 |
| OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL | $7,500 |
| GOODWILL FOUNDATION OF CENTRAL & SOUTHERN INDIANA | $6,500 |
| HOPE INTERNATIONAL | $6,000 |
| CMF INTERNATIONAL | $6,000 |
| PLANT WITH PURPOSE | $6,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| JUSTICE VENTURES INTERNATIONAL | $6,000 |
| SAGAMORE INSTITUTE | $5,500 |
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, $209k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 94% 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.
95 repeat relationships — 53 still active in FY2025, 42 since wound down; 11 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- EUEMPART USA4× · 2017–2020 · $118k · revenue +10%
- EEdify8× · 2018–2025 · $52k · revenue +133%
HOPE INTERNATIONAL7× · 2019–2025 · $42k · revenue +114%
Funded once
- EEMPARTone grant, 2021 · $23k
- NENEIGHBORHOOD ELECTRONIC DETECTION K-9one grant, 2018 · $5k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $5k
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The international leadership institute (ili) changes history by accelerating the spread of the gospel through training and mobilizing leaders of leaders to reach their nations. ili accomplishes this purpose through cutting edge leadership…
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
Educate, Inspire, Connect and Mobilize Community Leaders to serve and strengthen greater Indianapolis.
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.
Biglife international inc. empowers believers worldwide to reach and disciple their own people for jesus christ.
As part of the body of Christ, to see that every young person in every people group in every nation has the opportunity to make an informed decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ and become a part of the local church.
Enroll indy helps families choose schools that meet their children's needs by providing a one-stop enrollment process, school information that is relevant and easy to understand, and data to inform school improvement in indianapolis,…
The school's objective is to provide an excellent, christ-centered education, equipping students for a life of scholarship, leadership, and service.
To get the good news to every nation this generation by showing and sharing god's love by providing opportunities and supporting christian missionaries in over fifty seven countries around the world.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
TO MANAGE AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, HEALTH, AND RELIEF FOCUSED FAMILY OF ORGANIZATIONS HELPING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES LIFT THEMSELVES OUT OF POVERTY, SUPPORT WELL-BEING OF INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES, AND PROVIDE…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bright Hope International and the most unlike its peers is Renewing Communities Inc. 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 22 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 20% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
107 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. 107 of the 176 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 EMPART USA ↗
- Who funds HEART CHANGE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds Edify ↗
- Who funds HOPE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds Shepherd Community Inc ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CARING AND SHARING ↗
- Who funds WHEELER MISSION MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL LEGACY GROUP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Butler University ↗
- Who funds SAGAMORE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Elevate Indianapolis Inc ↗
- Who funds FLORESTA USA INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Redeem International ↗
- Who funds LUMITY ↗
- Who funds CAMPTOWN INC ↗
- Who funds THE MIND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE VENTURES INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Marian University ↗
- Who funds RENEWING COMMUNITIES 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 Indianapolis Foundation Inc · Central Indiana Community Foundation Inc · Lilly Endowment Inc · Nicholas H Noyes Jr Memorial Foundation · United Way of Central Indiana Inc · Lumina Foundation for Education Inc · Hamilton County Community Foundation Inc · Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust · Maurer Family Foundation Inc · Richard M Fairbanks Foundation Inc · The Brave Heart Foundation Inc · Hoover Family 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 Palmer 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.
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 Palmer Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Palmer 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.