· Private foundation
The Pfeffer 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k46 grants · $67k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $19k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $19,000 |
| NASHVILLE SYMPHONY | $9,625 |
| LEADERSHIP NASHVILLE | $7,500 |
| FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES | $6,000 |
| CHRIST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $5,000 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA - WEST TENNESSEE | $4,156 |
| LIPSCOMB UNIVERISTY | $4,000 |
| EASTER SEALS | $3,000 |
| AMAZIMA MINISTRIES | $2,578 |
| TURNING POINT USA | $2,000 |
| LINCOLN HERITAGE COUNCIL | $2,000 |
| SCOUNTING ART COLLECTION RECOVERY PROJECT INC | $2,000 |
| NASHVILLE ZOO | $1,500 |
| TUCKER'S HOUSE | $1,500 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA MIDDLE TENNESSEE COUNCIL | $1,450 |
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 (FY21–25, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 25% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +34% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 29 since wound down; 21 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24k 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
- LULIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2025 · $121k · revenue +41%
- BSBOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA 560 MIDDLE TENNESSEE6× · 2020–2025 · $71k · revenue +7%
- NSNashville Symphony Association5× · 2020–2025 · $48k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- OAOPERATION ANDREW GROUP INCone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +24%
- OAOLANCHO AID FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2020 · $6k · revenue -33%
- MGMCGOWAN GLOBAL INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +25%
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.
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Evangel is a comprehensive christian university that is committed to excellence in educating and equipping students to become spirit empowered servants of god who will impact the church and society globally.
George fox university, a christ centered community, prepares students spiritually, academically, and professionally to think with clarity, act with integrity, and serve with passion.
Our mission: to improve the quality of health care.our vision: better health care. better choices. better health.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Heritage Plantation 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 36 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
67 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. 67 of the 109 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 LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA 560 MIDDLE TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds Nashville Symphony Association ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHEEKWOOD BOTANICAL GARDEN AND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Amazima Ministries International Education and Empowerment for East ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds OPERATION ANDREW GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds SCOUTING ART COLLECTION RECOVERY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN ROAD ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Habitat for Humanity ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP NASHVILLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds OLANCHO AID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BEACON CENTER OF TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds MCGOWAN GLOBAL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds FAITH FAMILY MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds OAK HILL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE SAILING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PALO ALTO PARTNERS IN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds RENEWAL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds FRIST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MARTHA O'BRYAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JONI AND FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds DAYSTAR COUNSELING MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ABE'S GARDEN ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds Precept ↗
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 · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Dettwiller Foundation · Enchiridion Foundation · Ebs Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · Joe C Davis Foundation · Servant Foundation · Milton and Denice Johnson Family Foundation · The Signatry Charitable Trust · Purity 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 Pfeffer 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.
- Operation Snip 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.