· Private foundation
Better Place 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k24 grants · $82k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $505k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $297k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALAQUEST COLLABORATIVE FOR EDUCATION | $70,000 |
| GIDEONS ARMY GRASSROOTS ARMY FOR CHILDREN | $64,000 |
| CAHABA RIVER SOCIETY | $62,500 |
| EMPOWER SCHOOLS OF ALABAMA | $50,000 |
| YOUTH TOWERS INC | $50,000 |
| MCRAE LEARNING CENTER INC | $45,000 |
| SPRING VALLEY SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| EMBRACE ALABAMA KIDS | $35,000 |
| MCWANE SCIENCE CENTER | $32,500 |
| H3W INC | $30,000 |
| OASIS COUNSELING CENTER FOR WOMEN & CHILDREN | $30,000 |
| SHOWING UP FOR RACIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION FUND | $25,000 |
| HEARTS OF WHEELS | $25,000 |
| HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER | $22,500 |
| YMCA JUNIUS WARD JOHNSON MEMORIAL | $22,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $657k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 95% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +45% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
81 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2024, 46 since wound down; 17 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $207k 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
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC8× · 2017–2024 · $369k · revenue +817%- ACALAQUEST COLLABORATIVE FOR EDUCATION8× · 2017–2024 · $355k · revenue +293% · 65% of their budget
- SVSPRING VALLEY SCHOOL FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $321k · revenue +260%
Funded once
- AAAIDS ALABAMA INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +63%
- PHPACK HEALTH LLCone grant, 2020 · $33k
- SLST LUKES EPISCOPAL CHURCHone grant, 2018 · $30k
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 work in partnership with families and organizations to ensure that all alabama children (birth to five) get everything they need to develop to their fullest potential.
The alabama alliance netowrk works to strengthen and enhance alabama's civic society through research, education, and grantmaking
The mission of the alabama casa network, inc. is to equip and empower casa programs to advocate for all of alabama's abused and neglected children.
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…
A nonpartisan grassroots communication organization that works to raise awareness and increase engagement around community issues in alabama by working directly with civic organizations advocating civic participation in communities across…
The Organization is a nonprofit community defender providing legal assistance through court appointment to children and other indigent persons.
Alabama Rivers Alliance is a statewide network of groups working to protect and restore all of Alabama's water resources through building partnerships, empowering citizens, and advocating for sound water policy and its enforcement.
Legal services alabama is a statewide nonprofit dedicated to providing access to justice and quality civil legal assistance to educate and empower alabama's low-income community.
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…
Legal aid of east tennessee provides legal representation, legal education, and other civil legal services for the low-income population in our community through advocacy of all types.
To provide quality healthcare and related services to all communities, including the underserved and homeless persons, regardless of language, culture, or financial barriers
To empower adults in south memphis to break cycles of unemployment, establish economic stability, reconcile relationships, and restore dignity through knowledge, resources, and skills by the power of jesus christ.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Amanda Pair 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 25 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% 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.
130 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. 130 of the 169 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 HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ALAQUEST COLLABORATIVE FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds SPRING VALLEY SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Higher Purpose Hub ↗
- Who funds MCRAE LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Youth Towers ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST CHILDREN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds GIDEONS ARMY GRASSROOTS ARMY FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds EKVNV YEFOLECVLKE ↗
- Who funds SHARED INTEREST INC ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds MOVE GULF COAST COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Ecumenical Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds Hearts of Wheels ↗
- Who funds THE A EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds Cahaba River Society Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTHSERVE INC ↗
- Who funds MCWANE SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ADELANTE ALABAMA WORKER CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR VIOLENCE PREVENTION INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANAPOLIS MONUMENTAL MARATHON INC ↗
- Who funds EL FUTURO INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Birmingham Ministries ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE UNITED ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC AND IMMIGRANT CENTER OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds Under His Wings Inc ↗
- Who funds AIDS ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds WIREGRASS HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER SCHOOLS OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds Building Peace Inc ↗
- Who funds Durham PROUD Program ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WEST CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI 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 Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Protective Life Foundation · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · The Joseph S Bruno Charitable Foundation · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · The Hugh Kaul Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Altecstyslinger Foundation · Dunn-French 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 Better Place 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.
- Berkshire Hills Music Academy Inc — 63% of income from government
- National Fallen Firefighters Foundation — 24% of income from government
- Central Brevard Humane Society 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Better Place Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Better Place 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.