Tennessee · Nonprofit
Smoky Mountain Service Dogs
Smoky Mountain Service Dogs (Tennessee) receives grants from 43 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,274,103 to it, the largest being AMERICAN VALOR FOUNDATION ($260,000). 23 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $2.3M
- Funders on record
- 43
- Grants received
- $1.3M
- Net assets
- $10M
What Smoky Mountain Service Dogs does
Mission
Training and providing mobility assistance dogs to disabled veterans.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
Identify and obtain suitable dogs for the program. Utilize professional and volunteer dog trainers in order to train the dogs to meet the criteria of assistance dog international standards. Provide kennel facilities, food, and veterinary care for the dogs while in training. Screen potential veterans who are disabled to match with our trained dogs. Train the clients to work with a matched service dog. Transfer the ownership of the service dog to the client, at no cost to the recipient.
$634,909 spent100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2025 Form 990. Program spending in total: $634,909.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2019 to 2020, from $3.5M to $5.1M (+49%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 23% · 2018 18% · 2019 26% · 2020 23% · 2021 19% · 2022 27%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
55% of Smoky Mountain Service Dogs’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (81% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Board chair
Mike Kitchens
Chairman
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 4 funders to 15 funders, grant income fell $257k → $196k.
10 of 43 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 30% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Smoky Mountain Service Dogs’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 43 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Smoky Mountain Service Dogs has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 20% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
79% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Smoky Mountain Service Dogs.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 88% · 2018 46% · 2019 60% · 2020 19% · 2021 30% · 2022 28% · 2023 30% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
44% of Smoky Mountain Service Dogs's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 53% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
Smoky Mountain Service Dogs draws 69% of its grant income from funders outside Tennessee, across 17 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $384k arriving through sponsors registered in 8 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Smoky Mountain Service Dogs runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 7,349 human services nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 7,349 human services nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Government funding Smoky Mountain Service Dogs receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $1.8M on record.
- Department of Defense$1.8M
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like Smoky Mountain Service Dogs
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Tennessee
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
92% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
89%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Smoky Mountain Service Dogs: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Smoky Mountain Service Dogs?
- Smoky Mountain Service Dogs (Tennessee) receives grants from 43 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,274,103 to it, the largest being AMERICAN VALOR FOUNDATION ($260,000). 23 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Smoky Mountain Service Dogs have?
- IRS filings report 43 organizations giving $1,274,103 in grants to Smoky Mountain Service Dogs, 23 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Smoky Mountain Service Dogs?
- AMERICAN VALOR FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $260,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Smoky Mountain Service Dogs find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Tennessee. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Smoky Mountain Service Dogs →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 43 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing