· Private foundation
The Whippoorwill Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k26 grants · $81k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $187k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $619k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW JERSEY AUDUBON SOCIETY | $125,000 |
| LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA | $118,600 |
| WATERFRONT BOTANICAL GARDENS | $105,000 |
| METRO UNITED WAY | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF CANADIAN NATURE INC | $70,000 |
| LOUISVILLE BALLET | $50,000 |
| EVOLVE502 SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $36,000 |
| FUND FOR THE ARTS | $30,000 |
| LOUISVILLE URBAN LEAGUE | $25,000 |
| CANOPY CERTIFIED INC | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $23,821 |
| BERNHEIM FOREST AND ARBORETUM | $17,500 |
| GILDA'S CLUB OF KENTUCKIANA | $10,000 |
| LOUISVILLE PUBLIC MEDIA | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $125k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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.
48 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 9 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
- KDKENTUCKY DANCE COUNCIL INC DBA LOUISVILLE BALLET8× · 2017–2024 · $894k · revenue +78%
- TLTHE LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA INC6× · 2017–2024 · $590k · revenue +179%
New Jersey Audubon Society4× · 2019–2024 · $460k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- LOLOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA ENDOWMENT FUNDone grant, 2021 · $250k
- YAYOUNG ADULT DEVELOPMENT IN ACTION INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +138%
- BFBOWMAN FIELD FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $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.
To improve the quality of life for all kentuckians through research, education and advocacy on important policy issues facing the commonwealth.
The louisville academy of music welcomes everyone to join our musical community. lam nurtures lifelong learners, not solely as musicians but also as creative, inspired people. equity in music education is a force to realize potential,…
Broadens the perspectives of current and emerging leaders through experiential education that inspires them to advance kentucky.
Kentucky natural lands trust works to protect, connect and restore wildlands with a commitment to safeguarding biodiversity, mitigating climate impacts and fostering healthy communities.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
To acquire, maintain, improve, leverage, manage, lease, and convey real and personal property for the benefit of the university of louisville.
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
Our mission is to improve the health and quality of life for louisville's current and future generations through a robust, equitable and diverse tree canopy.
The kentucky college of art and design opens the door to a creative and productive life through an undergraduate education in the contemporary arts.
Mission statement of washington and lee university: washington and lee university provides a liberal arts education that develops students' capacity to think freely, critically, and humanely and to conduct themselves with honor, integrity,…
Perform fundraising functions, provide financial support, carryout the purpose and otherwise operating for the benefit of the zoological society of cincinnati.
The louisville preservation fund,inc. revitalizes historic places through direct real estate action and partnerships to enhance community and promote economic development.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Louisville Orchestra Inc and the most unlike its peers is Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary. 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.
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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 87 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 KENTUCKY DANCE COUNCIL INC DBA LOUISVILLE BALLET ↗
- Who funds THE LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds New Jersey Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds METRO UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds WATERFRONT BOTANICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF LOUISVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds EVOLVE502 SCHOLARS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE LOUISVILLE URBAN LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB KENTUCKIANA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF CANADIAN NATURE INC ↗
- Who funds THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SOMES-MEYNELL WILDLIFE SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SPEED ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE COUNCIL FOR CANADIAN AMERICAN RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds ACTORS THEATRE OF LOUISVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds DERBY CITY CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MILTON ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CANOPY CERTIFIED INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG ADULT DEVELOPMENT IN ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds PRACTICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Coast Heritage Trust ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR INTERFAITH RELATIONS ↗
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 Gheens Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Depository Inc · LG&E and Ku Foundation Inc · Snowy Owl Foundation Inc · W L Lyons Brown Foundation · The Community Foundation of Louisville Inc · Brown-Forman Foundation · Sociable Weaver Foundation Inc · Republic Bank Foundation Inc · Owsley Brown II Family Foundation Inc · Ina B Bond Ashbourne Charitable Fund Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Corporate Depository Inc
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 Whippoorwill 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Manomet Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- New Jersey Audubon Society — 1% of income from government
- Milton Academy — 0% 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 Whippoorwill Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Whippoorwill Family 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.