· Public charity
United Way of Greater Chattanooga
Uniting people and resources in building a stronger, healthier community
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 78 grants below total $3,984,241 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $4,765,435 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $781,194 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k49 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k22 grants · $2.2M
- $250k+2 grants · $529k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Partnership for Families Children & Adults | $275,900 |
| Northside Neighborhood House | $252,801 |
| Chambliss Center for Children | $231,212 |
| Boys and Girls Club | $198,782 |
| Girls Incorporated | $182,153 |
| LA PAZ | $156,173 |
| Signal Centers Inc | $137,529 |
| YMCA | $125,706 |
| CHATTANOOGA AREA FOOD BANK | $110,431 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters | $109,134 |
| Chattanooga Chamber Foundation | $103,500 |
| FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA | $92,069 |
| THE BETHLEHEM CENTER | $81,879 |
| Chattanooga Goodwill Industries | $78,243 |
| The AIM Center Inc | $77,758 |
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 (FY19–25, $5.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 3% of those 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.
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 20% of United Way of Greater Chattanooga’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, 96% of the giving stays in TN; read by stated purpose it is 77% — 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 +23% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
91 repeat relationships — 77 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHATTANOOGA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $2.3M · revenue +68%
- NNNORTHSIDE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE7× · 2019–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +107%
- CCCHAMBLISS CENTER FOR CHILDREN7× · 2019–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +37%
Funded once
- FCFORTWOOD CENTER INCone grant, 2019 · $201k
- PPPURPOSE POINT COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTERone grant, 2023 · $135k · revenue -45%
- AHAUSTIN HATCHER FOUNDATION FOR PEDIATRIC CANCERone grant, 2023 · $125k · 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.
Uniting people and resources in building a stronger, healthier community
Chattanooga design studio seeks to elevate the quality of life for all citizens through guidance, collaboration, innovation, and education that promotes livable, accessible, walkable, and humane urban design.
Encourage economic development
Invest chattanooga uses flexible, low-cost capital and strategic public-private partnerships to produce financially sustainable, mixed-income housing with deep permanent affordability that the market alone cannot deliver.
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.
Carolina Family Health Centers, Inc. provides accessible and affordable health care with excellence...where patients come FIRST
Providing services to clients to assist in preventing homelessness, training partner organizations on reporting system and reporting to governments, statistical information.
To combat severe physical and sexual abuse and resulting trauma by coordinating and providing services in a child friendly, safe and nurturing environment.
The mission of chattacademy is to reimagine what public education can look like in chattanooga, tennessee. chattacademy's mission is to graduate bilingual, biliterate critical thinkers ready to make an impact on the world through top…
To prepare students to lead and serve with distinction while representing christ and his kingdom in all areas of home, church, society and culture.
To advance state policies and practices that ensure all tennessee children from birth through 3rd grade get the high quality early education they need to power our state's future.
We guide and encourage donors who are motivated toward kingdom-building generosity. our mission is carried out through four primary initiatives: providing donor-advised funds, inspiring and encouraging generosity within families along the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc and the most unlike its peers is Downside Up 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 36 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
103 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. 103 of the 136 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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CHAMBLISS CENTER FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds THE ORANGE GROVE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INC OF CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds SIGNAL CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF METROPOLITAN CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds HELEN ROSS MCNABB CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHEROKEE AREA COUNCIL INCORPORATED BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds Chattanooga Goodwill Industries Inc ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUT COUNCIL OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SPEECH AND HEARING CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CATOOSA ↗
- Who funds THE AIM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LA PAZ DE DIOS INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds Chattanooga Area Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA ROOM IN THE INN INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA ↗
- Who funds LITTLE MISS MAG EARLY LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA AREA INC ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT RETURN INC ↗
- Who funds LIFESPRING COMMUNITY HEALTH ↗
- Who funds LAUNCH INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S ACADEMY FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CRISIS CENTER OF WALKER DADE CATOOSA& CHATTOOGA COINC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF EAST TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds GREENSPACES INC ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR ALCOHOL & DRUG ABUSE SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds EPILEPSY FOUNDATION OF SOUTHEAST TENNESS ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER COMMUNITY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds PRO RE BONA EARLY LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds PURPOSE POINT COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN HATCHER FOUNDATION FOR PEDIATRIC CANCER ↗
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: The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga Inc · Chattanooga Christian Community Foundation · Weldon F Osborne Foundation Inc · Benwood Foundation Inc · Robert F Stone Foundation AKA Bobby Stone Foundation · Robert L & Kathrina H Maclellan Founda Foundation · Lyndhurst Foundation Inc · The Maclellan Foundation Inc · Lillian L Colby Charitable Fdn Ia · Memorial Health Care System Inc · Hamico Inc · George R Johnson Family 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 United Way of Greater Chattanooga 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.