· Private foundation
The Ronne & Donald Hess 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k37 grants · $65k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $100k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $199k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BREAKTHROUGH T1D | $124,502 |
| INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL | $74,833 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| CHABAD OF DARTMOUTH | $18,210 |
| BIRMINGHAM JEWISH FEDERATION | $16,005 |
| WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA | $13,222 |
| UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM | $12,726 |
| UAB HEERSINK SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $10,166 |
| DARTMOUTH HITCHCOCK HEALTH | $10,000 |
| GRANITE UNITED WAY | $7,500 |
| NE MILES JEWISH DAY SCHOOL | $7,500 |
| PROJECT NIGHT NIGHT | $7,200 |
| DARTMOUTH COLLEGE FUND | $5,000 |
| NEW LONDON BARN THEATER | $4,000 |
| TEMPLE EMANU-EL | $3,600 |
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 (FY20–24, $55k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 91% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The Ronne & Donald Hess 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +32% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
72 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2024, 33 since wound down; 5 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $148k 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
- ISINDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL5× · 2020–2024 · $354k · revenue +201%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $87k · revenue +193%
- NEN E MILES JEWISH DAY SCHOOL5× · 2020–2024 · $67k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- IAI3 ACADEMYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue ×71
- RMRED MOUNTAIN THEATRE COone grant, 2021 · $20k
DIRECT RELIEFone grant, 2022 · $12k · 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.
To support the university of alabama at birmingham in its scientific and educational mission, including managing and disbursing funds, acquiring real property, and providing operational flexibility.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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 organization works to inspire and empower educators and institutions to create transformative jewish learning experiences for children, teens, and families. building on its historic role serving jewish day schools, congregations, and…
As the largest association of independent schools, nais co-creates the future of education by uniting and empowering our community. we do this through thought leadership, research, creation and curation of resources, and direct…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
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.
United way's mission is to end intergenerational poverty in our region by harnessing, leveraging and strategically investing the collective power of donors, advocates and volunteers, to help individuals and families break the cycle of…
The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
Atlanta jewish academy is a college preparatory, co-educational, preschool-12th grade, independent jewish day school, guided by modern orthodox values and principles. we embody the ideals of community, tradition, individual development and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish of New Hampshire Inc and the most unlike its peers is Aloha 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 34 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) — 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 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.
58 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. 58 of the 118 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 INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM JEWISH FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds N E MILES JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds COLLAT JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF BIRMINGHAM ↗
- Who funds GRANITE UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health ↗
- Who funds UNITED ABILITY INC ↗
- Who funds I3 ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA HOLOCAUST EDUCATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC AND IMMIGRANT CENTER OF ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN ACTION ALABAMA ↗
- Who funds IMPACTISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT NIGHT NIGHT ↗
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: Lisa and Alan Engel Foundation · Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Protective Life Foundation · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · Altecstyslinger Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · Abroms Charitable Foundation Inc · Arlington Partners Charitable 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 Ronne & Donald Hess 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.
- Montshire Museum of Science Inc — 4% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% 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 The Ronne & Donald Hess Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ronne & Donald Hess 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.