· Private foundation
The Robert E & Jenny D Kirkland 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k37 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $59k
- $250k+2 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Discovery Park of America | $8,664,085 |
| Charitable - Promethean Foundation | $2,288,300 |
| Union City Rotary Foundation | $59,000 |
| The Cincinnati Tennis Foundation | $48,000 |
| Univ of TN Foundation | $15,000 |
| Boca Grande Women's Scholarship Club | $12,000 |
| Imagine Worldwide | $10,000 |
| Cumberland University | $10,000 |
| Preston Taylor Ministries | $10,000 |
| Middle TN Boy Scouts of AM | $5,000 |
| Inland Waterways Museum | $5,000 |
| Mercy Community Healthcare | $5,000 |
| Who You With Ministries | $5,000 |
| Thistle Farms | $5,000 |
| The National Quilt Museum | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $67k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 81% 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 +66% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
56 repeat relationships — 38 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 8 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $46k 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
- DPDiscovery Park of America Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $54M · revenue +52% · 91% of their budget
- UCUNION CITY ROTARY FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $452k · revenue +3% · 41% of their budget
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $85k · revenue +178%
Funded once
- PFPromethean Foundation Incgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $1.7M · revenue +29% · 92% of their budget
- BGBOCA GRANDE UNITED METHODIST CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $60k
- SHSUNCOAST HUMANE SOCIETYINCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -8%
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.
Our Mission at Welcome House Knoxville is to share the love of Jesus through the ministries of hospitality and friendship. We provide safe and loving homes for individuals and families in transition to permanent housing.
Empowering women to break the cycles of poverty, addiction, and human trafficking.
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.
Cumberland 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 the patient's ability to pay.
The united way of south central tennessee's mission is to improve lives by advancing opportunities for education, health, and financial stability for all. its vision is to be the primary community solutions leader for human services.
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.
A local united christian organization and ministry dedicated to providing love, hope, respect and a new beginning for the homeless, offering a holistic care program that leads to true lasting healing.
To provide accessible affordable, holistic healthcare to patients across the lifespan with a special focus on vulnerable populations, within a financially sustainable delivery model. further, uchs supports health professions education,…
By creating a safe and structured two year residential program the Hope House of Tennessee will aim to equip and empower personal and educational growth economic self-sufficiency and a deeper understanding of Christs unconditional love.
Originating from a christian commitment of service, we provide high quality care, services and communities for seniors
Methodist childrens homes seeks to bring restoration to children and youth who have been neglected or abused. by the end of their time with us, we hope to see that they find reconciliation with their biological families, love within an…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Luke's Community House Inc and the most unlike its peers is Masquerade Theatre. 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 26 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) — 0% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 90 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 Discovery Park of America Inc ↗
- Who funds Promethean Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds UNION CITY ROTARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Cincinnati Tennis Foundation ↗
- Who funds PRESTON TAYLOR MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MERCY HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE MAGDALEN HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THISTLE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE SAFE HAVEN FAMILY SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds CUMBERLAND UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS FOR MEDICAL RELIEF ↗
- Who funds SHERRY'S HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION STAND DOWN TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Masquerade Theatre ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds THE HUMANE ASSOC OF WILSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WILSON COUNTY CIVIC LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds NASHVILLE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds THE BRIDGE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Obion County ↗
- Who funds Phoebe Connections Inc ↗
- Who funds IMAGINE WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds SUNCOAST HUMANE SOCIETYINC ↗
- Who funds BOCA GRANDE HEALTH CLINIC FNDTN 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: Hca Healthcare Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist Foundation · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Memorial Foundation Inc · Nashville Predators Foundation · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · McCauley-Lindsay Charities of Tenn · Joe C Davis Foundation · The Healing Trust Formerly Baptist Healing Hospital Trust · The Frist Foundation · Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tn Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund
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 Robert E & Jenny D Kirkland 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 Robert E & Jenny D Kirkland Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert E & Jenny D Kirkland 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.