This note led the October 4, 2026 nonprofit digest.

The Birmingham big names

— Kevin, gleantree

Last week's chart left out the Lucille S. Beeson trust — $7.3 million to Birmingham in twelve checks, and it still didn't make a list ranked by how often a foundation gives. I said that was the point and moved on. This week: what Beeson actually is.

Call them the Big Names — foundations that wrote fewer than forty checks into Birmingham but averaged more than $100,000 a check. Sixty-five of them. Here are a few observations:

They move more money than the Short List does, in a tenth of the checks. The two dozen on last week's Short List wrote 2,604 grants worth $46.5 million. The Big Names wrote 251 grants worth $62.5 million — forty-two cents of every foundation dollar that reached nonprofits based in Birmingham.

Two-thirds of the Big Names fund exactly one organization. Look at which ones and the pattern is immediate: Samford University took $9.8 million across eight grants. McWane Science Center, $3.0 million in two. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, $2.6 million in two. Church of the Highlands, $2.3 million. Highlands College, $2.1 million. These aren't operating grants to nonprofits — they're named projects at institutions. A building, a program, an endowment.

This is the same split I wrote about in August. Nationally, four in five foundation checks are under $25,000 and they carry eleven cents of every dollar — while the biggest checks go to universities, hospital systems and other institutions. Two different markets wearing the same word. Birmingham is that picture in miniature: the Big Names are the dollar market, last week's Short List is the check market, and they barely overlap. When a funder turns up with a huge Birmingham total, look at the check count before you get excited.

One more thing worth noting. Forty-five of the sixty-five are based outside Alabama — Lilly, Bloomberg, Mellon, Mastercard. In August I wrote that about half of American foundation dollars never cross a state line and asked whether your own market matched. Birmingham is 55% in-state, 45% out. Almost exactly average.

Next week, we'll look at the Perennials — roughly 250 foundations that give to Birmingham nonprofits every single year.

Each box is one of the 65 Big Names, sized by total dollars to Birmingham nonprofits in tax years 2022–2024. Amber boxes are Alabama foundations (20); dark ones are based elsewhere (45). The 28 that gave $500,000 or more are named individually; the remaining 37 are pooled into the two faded blocks and named in the list below. Lilly Endowment alone is a fifth of the group's $62.5 million.

For completeness, the thirty-seven foundations pooled into the two "other" blocks in the figure — each gave under $500,000 to Birmingham nonprofits across the three years. Names as filed.

In Alabama (11): Jake F. Aronov · Louise Maytag Smith Charitable Trust · Diabetic Clinic of Mobile · Weil Family · John H. Watson Charitable · William H. Sadler Jr. Test Trust · Serra · Singleton Family · E. Roy Albright · Sterne Agee & Leach Charitable · CB Foundation

Outside Alabama (26): Aim 5 · RPKSC Family · Katherinejames · Marguerite Casey · The Grove · Tamias · Carl A. and Lois E. Davis · Public Welfare · Tuchman Family · Daily Grace · Mary Reynolds Babcock · Bunge · Cornelius Family · CHS · The Hearst Foundation · Terra Foundation for American Art · William Randolph Hearst · Josiah Macy Jr. · Isaacson · Steve and Natalee Herrig Family · Levi Strauss · Richard and Loan Hill Family · Drury Family Charitable · Blanchard Family (UAW James H. Blanchard) · TC Energy · Wayne G. Basler Charitable

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