· Private foundation
The Trammell Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Trammell Foundation’s FY2023 grant dollars went to Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2023 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The Trammell Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $146k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $132k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTMONT COLLEGE | $12,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FNDTN | $12,000 |
| SMU DEDMAN SCHOOL OF LAW | $12,000 |
| THE MENNINGER CLINIC FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $12,000 |
| MHS BOOSTER CLUB | $12,000 |
| RED BUCKET EQUINE RESCUE | $12,000 |
| HOUSTON METHODIST HOSPITAL FDTN | $12,000 |
| HIGHLAND PARK EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| WELLESLEY COLLEGE | $12,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $12,000 |
| EMERGE | $7,000 |
| TUFTS UNIVERSITY | $7,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 13% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +41% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2022, 6 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2022, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $36k 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
- WCWESTMONT COLLEGE6× · 2017–2022 · $75k · revenue +38%
- SJSt John's School5× · 2017–2021 · $63k · revenue +130%
- HPHIGHLAND PARK ISD EDUCATION FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2022 · $59k · revenue +588%
Funded once
YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLSone grant, 2017 · $11k · revenue -7%
Washington and Lee Universityone grant, 2017 · $11k · revenue +15%- EHEPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $11k
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.
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
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…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
At Roger Williams University, students are prepared to be thinkers and doers ready to solve challenging problems with innovative solutions. RWU offers robust offerings of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across eight…
The mission of the University is to inspire independent thinkers who become trustworthy, effective leaders that shape caring communities. The vision of the University of Lynchburg is to cultivate a world that is innovative, authentic, and…
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Since 1775, the mission of Hampden-Sydney College has been to form good men and good citizens in an atmosphere of sound learning.
HMC seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wellesley College and the most unlike its peers is Red Bucket Equine Rescue. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 24 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 VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds WESTMONT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND PARK ISD EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RED BUCKET EQUINE RESCUE ↗
- Who funds THE MENNINGER CLINIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ACADEMY INC DBA YELLOWSTONE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Washington and Lee University ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST HARBOR SAILING SCHOOL ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Trammell 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.
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% 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 Trammell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Trammell 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.