· Private foundation
The Ross Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k17 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $206k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $153k
- $250k+1 grant · $352k
Largely a single collection — about 97% of reported assets are Timber Land Held For Exempt Purposes.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Arkadelphia Promise Foundation | $351,684 |
| Arkansas Game & Fish Foundation | $153,209 |
| Arkansas Forestry Assoc Education Foundation | $46,606 |
| The Nature Conservancy | $46,606 |
| Individual grant recipient | $33,750 |
| Ouachita Baptist University | $28,600 |
| Arkansas Foodbank Network | $15,000 |
| Dawson Education Cooperative | $15,000 |
| Ouachita Baptist University | $10,000 |
| Arkadelphia Public Schools | $10,000 |
| The CALL of Clark County | $5,000 |
| Vera Lloyd Presbyterian Family Services | $5,000 |
| University of Arkansas Foundation Inc | $5,000 |
| Arkadelphia Public Schools | $5,000 |
| CASA of Clark and Pike Counties | $4,200 |
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, $56k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
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 7% of The Ross 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. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in AR; read by stated purpose it is 97% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +53% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 4 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- AGARKANSAS GAME AND FISH FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $560k · revenue +64%
- AFARKANSAS FOODBANK8× · 2017–2024 · $122k · revenue +106%
- OBOUACHITA BAPTIST UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $121k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- COCHOOSE OUTDOORS INCone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue -95%
- PDPercy Donna Malone Child Safety Cntone grant, 2020 · $15k
- TATHE ARKANSAS REGIONAL INNOVATION HUB INCone grant, 2020 · $14k · revenue -26%
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.
Advocate for educational professionals and unite our members and the state to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.
The organization provides training and service assistance to farm development, community education programs, land retention, program management, housing, rural and community development
Producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.
Advocating for the development and implementation of data-driven public policy that improves child well-being in arkansas, with a focus on economic security, education, health, early childhood, child welfare, juvenile justice, and racial…
To promote excellence in health care through evaluation and education
Provide educational programs for construction industries.
Renewing the land of opportunity by simplifying government and solving generational problems for the next generation.
Habilitation and residential services for adults with developmental disabilities
Arkansas farm bureau foundation (the "foundation") is organized for charitable and educational purposes to further the understanding of agricultural and rural issues, and to support the agricultural and rural community through financial…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Arkansas Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Percy and Donna Malone Child Safety Center Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 years old; the field is 14. 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 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 86 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 ARKADELPHIA PROMISE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS GAME AND FISH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS FORESTRY ASSOCIATION EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds OUACHITA BAPTIST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHOOSE OUTDOORS INC ↗
- Who funds Baptist Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute ↗
- Who funds GROUP LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS HUNTERS FEEDING THE HUNGRY INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARKANSAS REGIONAL INNOVATION HUB INC ↗
- Who funds VERA LLOYD PRESBYTERIAN FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds PERCY AND DONNA MALONE CHILD SAFETY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Arkansas FIRST Incorporated ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds ARKADELPHIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MID AMERICA SCIENCE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds NATURAL STATE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FAMILY ENRICHMENT CENTER ↗
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: Arkansas Community Foundation Inc · C Louis and Mary C Cabe Foundation · Arvest Foundation · Roy & Christine Sturgis Charitable & Educational Trust · George H Dunklin Jr Charitable Foundation · Riggs Benevolent Fund · Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable And · The Coulson Foundation · Windgate Charitable Foundation Inc · Entergy Charitable Foundation · Morris Foundation Inc · Munro 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 Ross 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 Ross Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ross 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.