· Private foundation
William H & Ella W McMahan Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 65% of WILLIAM H & ELLA W MCMAHAN FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $59k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY | $31,400 |
| CRIEVE HALL CHURCH OF CHRIST | $17,400 |
| MT DORA CHILDREN'S HOME | $10,000 |
| FAITH FAMILY MEDICAL CENTER | $5,000 |
| SYCAMORE VIEW CHURCH OF CHRIST | $4,750 |
| BRIDGE MINISTRY | $3,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| ST JOSEPH'S INDIAN SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| GLOBAL CHRISTIAN RELIEF | $1,000 |
| PRAGER U | $1,000 |
| THE THOMAS MORE SOCIETY | $1,000 |
| NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICE DEFENSE | $750 |
| REVELATION MEDIA | $100 |
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 (FY17–22, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 78% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 4 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- FUFREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $167k · revenue +51%
- TMTHOMAS MORE SOCIETY6× · 2018–2024 · $57k · revenue +105%
- LULIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY4× · 2017–2020 · $27k · revenue +44%
Funded once
- DTDINO TZANETOS ATHENS (GREECE) CHURCH OF CHRISTone grant, 2020 · $18k
- SCSYCAMORE CHURCH OF CHRISTone grant, 2017 · $13k
- SCSOS CHILDREN'S VILLAGES-USA INCone grant, 2017 · $11k · revenue -36%
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.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
To advance economic and social liberties and a free enterprise society through strategic litigation, training, communication, activism and research. in addition, the center will train law students, lawyers and policy activists in the…
As noted in its articles of incorporation, the mission of the aclu foundation is "to encourage, sponsor, and facilitate the cultivation and diffusion of knowledge and understanding of the various civil liberties and civil rights which are…
The aclu of north carolina dares to create a more perfect union - beyond one person, party, or side. our mission is to realize this promise of the united states and north carolina constitutions for all and expand the reach of their…
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
American press institute acts as a scout on the frontier of technology and audience behavior to identify where change is occurring and helps news organizations learn how to implement and scale that change successfully so they have a…
We provide exemplary interdisciplinary programs for a community of scholar-practitioners within a distributed learning model grounded in student-driven inquiry and leading to enhanced knowledge.
The foundation works to defend and promote the constitution of the united states, focusing especially on the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 14th amendments. the foundation also works to defend and promote the constitution of the…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
Freedom house is an independent non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works to defend and expand freedom globally to help secure a world where all are free. we identify and analyze threats to freedom (research & analysis),…
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Revelation Media Inc. 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 32 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 63 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 FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THOMAS MORE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds United American Patriots Inc ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH FAMILY MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICE DEFENSE INC ↗
- Who funds SOS CHILDREN'S VILLAGES-USA INC ↗
- Who funds DAVID HOROWITZ FREEDOM CENTER ↗
- Who funds FIRST LIBERTY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS UNION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CORNERSTONE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Care Net ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TENNESSEE CHILDREN'S HOME INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS FOR PURPLE HEARTS ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN LIBERTY ↗
- Who funds THE BLAKEFORD AT GREEN HILLS ↗
- Who funds United States Justice Foundation ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF COMPASSION ↗
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: Servant Foundation · Ebs Foundation · Farrell Family Foundation · Christian Community Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Christian Heritage Foundation Attn Michael a Kulp · Irving Rothlein Foundation · H & R Peters Family Foundation · John P & Kathryn G Evans Foundation · Quaker City Foundation · Donors Trust Inc · Chattanooga Christian Community 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 William H & Ella W McMahan 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.
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 William H & Ella W McMahan Foundation?
Find your warmest path to William H & Ella W McMahan 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.