· Private foundation
The Sanders Family 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $269k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BIG OAK RANCH | $40,000 |
| HICA HISPANIC INTEREST COALITION OF ALABAMA SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $30,000 |
| ALABAMA AEROSPACE AND AVIATION | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA | $25,000 |
| BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF LAW FOUNDATION | $22,000 |
| FOOD FOR THOUGHT OUTREACH | $20,000 |
| GARDERE COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| WESTONWOOD RANCH | $20,000 |
| RESTORATION ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| SOUTH WALTON ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| BETTER BASICS | $15,000 |
| GLENWOOD SCHOOLS OF ALABAMA | $12,000 |
| ONEONTA FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES | $5,000 |
| TOM BELL MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL GOLF CLASSIC TOURNAMENT | $3,000 |
| ONEONTA PUBLIC LIBRARY | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $152k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 79% 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.
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 +24% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- BOBIG OAK RANCH INC9× · 2017–2025 · $217k · revenue +105%
- TRTHE RESTORATION ACADEMY9× · 2017–2025 · $165k · revenue +166%
- BBBETTER BASICS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $110k · revenue +142%
Funded once
- AAALABAMA AEROSPACE AND AVIATIONone grant, 2022 · $40k
- HFHARVEST FELLOWSHIP CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $32k
- BSBIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF LAWone grant, 2018 · $20k
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.
Arborbrook Christian Academy partners with parents to equip, empower, and encourage students to cultivate godly character, pursue life-long learning, and love the Lord Jesus Christ.
To glorify god by providing a quality, christ-centered education which challenges students and teachers to maximize their potential so that graduates are prepared to further their education while becoming productive christian citizens.
Operation of a public charter school in Livingston, AL.
Operation of a public charter school in Livingston, AL.
Operation of a public charter school in Mobile Alabama.
Woodfield academy empowers students with diagnosed learning differences or developmental disorders to reach their maximum potential through an individualized education approach.
Education of grades pre-school through eighth grade.
Arbor school is a small learning community founded on the premise that education is decisive and enduring to the degree that it supports the development of intellect, character, and creativity.
Education of Children from pre-school through 9th grade
We inspire passinate, confident, and creative students in an individualized, hands-on learning environment that integrates christian values while striving for academic excellence.
To operate a christian school serving grades k-12
To educate, empower, and build hope for children with significant special needs and their families.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Indian Springs School and the most unlike its peers is Birmingham School of Law Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 30 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 BIG OAK RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds THE RESTORATION ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Birmingham School of Law Foundation ↗
- Who funds BETTER BASICS INC ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA AEROSPACE & AVIATION HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR THOUGHT OUTREACH INC ↗
- Who funds South Walton Academy Inc ↗
- Who funds GARDERE COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds INDIAN SPRINGS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE SCHOOLS OF ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds WESTONWOOD RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds ONEONTA FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds THE EXCEPTIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDS DAY SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Arc of Central Alabama Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UAB RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
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: Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation · Alabama Power Foundation Inc · The Maynard Nexsen Foundation · Hill Crest Foundation Inc · The Daniel Foundation of Alabama · The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham · W W Walker Jr and Family Charitable Foundation · The James Milton and Sallie R Johnson Foundation · The H Evan Zeiger Jr & Margaret Zeiger Charitable Foundation · Robert R Meyer Foundation · Susan Mott Webb Charitable Trust · Orlean & Ralph W Beeson 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 Sanders Family 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, a single department, or state — 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.