How much did Vanderbilt University grant in FY2023?

Health$211MEducation$31MRecreation & Sports$4.4MScience & Tech$2.3MArts & Culture$1.7MCommunity Improvement$1.1MPublic Benefit$818kSocial Science$400kInternational$363kOther$69M

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2019

research instructiondisordersnervousgreater nashvillecollaborationencouragegeorgetown

2020

churchlegalsafeawarenesstransitionbasicchild

2021

siimmedical imagingmodelnotre dametraining sponsoredresponsibilitylipscomb

2022

returnincarcerationaccesssuccessfulemploymentfocusingaffordable

2023

uscinspirefaculty staffotherslearninnovationstates

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2023 · 176 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2023

Under $10k20 grants · $138k
$10k–50k70 grants · $1.5M
$50k–250k60 grants · $7.4M
$250k+26 grants · $52M

$43,705

Median grant

States reached

$13.1B

Total assets

Largest grants

Vanderbilt University Medical Center$39,587,168
University of Memphis$895,141
The University of Tennessee$807,023
Northwestern University$805,643
University of Texas at Austin$779,216
University of Wisconsin System$771,303
University of Pittsburgh$697,263
The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois$649,221
University of Washington$586,569
Ohio State Univ Research Foundation$581,217
North Carolina State University$550,947
The Learning Agency$550,000
Wake Forest University Health Sciences$510,848
Regents University of California Los Angeles$425,445
Augusta University Research Institute Inc$423,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY18–23, $236k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

98%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$317M · 222 repeat orgs$4.9M to everyone else

222 repeat relationships — 129 still active in FY2023, 93 since wound down; 44 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

222

Total granted

$317M

$2.6M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+35%

+59%

Still filing today

53%

57%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.3M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationHealthArts & CultureCommunity ImprovementScience & TechHuman ServicesOther

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

VU
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
6× · 2018–2023 · $205M · revenue +67%
Northwestern University
6× · 2018–2023 · $4.3M · revenue +33%
University of Pittsburgh
6× · 2018–2023 · $3.8M · revenue +23%

Funded once

SF
Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicinegraduated
one grant, 2021 · $373k · revenue +28%
MN
Metropolitan Nashville Public Schoolsgraduated
one grant, 2021 · $344k · revenue +64% · 69% of their budget
MS
Medtronic Sofamor Danek USA Incgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $313k · revenue +31%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

Vanderbilt University

See Disclosure Above.

Education

Philadelphia University

To improve lives and provide students with exceptional value in 21st century professional education.

Education

Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

To improve the wellness of all people through innovative, interprofessional education of health and biomedical professionals and the discovery and implementation of knowledge.

—

Medical University of South Carolina

The medical university of south carolina foundation (the "foundation") was incorporated in july 1966 under the laws of south carolina as an educational, charitable, eleemosynary foundation to promote educational, research, clinical, and…

Health

The McCombs School of Business

To provide support to The University of Texas McCombs School of Business.

Education

Tennessee Wesleyan University

Four-year liberal arts college

Education

North Carolina State University

Supports, by financial assistance and otherwise, the various colleges within the university, the libraries, and other university-connected functions.

Education

Research Triangle Institute

Research Triangle Institute is one of the world's leading research institutes, dedicated(see Sch O) to improving the human condition by turning knowledge into practice. Our staff of more than 5,300 provides research and technical expertise…

Science & Tech

University of New Orleans Research and

To support any and all programs, facilities, research, and educational opportunities offered by the University of New Orleans and the University of Louisiana System.

Health

Trinity University

Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.

Education

The George Washington University

Education and research

Education

Washington and Lee University

See schedule owashington and lee university provides a liberal arts education to approximately 1,800 undergraduate students & offers jd & llm studies to approximately 400 law students each year.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Kentucky Research Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Rand Corporation. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 44 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

2%5/327

the rest of the field

11%

4,005/36,073

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.

05the grantee network

190 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

187/190

Grantees still filing

159/190

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Health$211,218,152Other$71,038,041Education$30,689,292Recreation & Sports$4,370,830Science & Tech$2,314,807Arts & Culture$1,664,303Community Improvement$1,067,399

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.

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.

The Frist FoundationTN67.6× affinity32 shared granteesties to 9 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Frist Foundation · Memorial Foundation Inc · United Way of Middle Tennessee Inc · Vanderbilt University Medical Center · The Community Foundation of Middle · Hca Healthcare Foundation · American Chemical Society · The Healing Trust · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Trustees of Boston University · Joe C Davis Foundation · Dorothy Cate and Thomas F Frist

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 organisation Vanderbilt University 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: YOUR Center.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

insufficient risk

Limited financial data in public filings.

Track record & reputation

low risk

7 years of Form 990 filings, still active.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 383399998 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on YOUR Center, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

Awaiting reportFinancial stability— Runway not derivable from filings.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue contracted over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 71% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to Vanderbilt University?

Find your warmest path to Vanderbilt University through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

Vanderbilt University

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

190 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Vanderbilt University?

More from the funding graph

Vanderbilt University

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

190 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Vanderbilt University?

More from the funding graph