· Private foundation
Bignon 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES | $30,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| PAWMETTO LIFELINE INC | $25,000 |
| GARNET TRUST FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $20,000 |
| SHRINERS HOSPITALS | $10,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $10,000 |
| RICHLAND COUNTY SHERIFFS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| USO | $10,000 |
| PAWLEYS ISLAND COMMUNITY CHURCH | $5,000 |
| WELVISTA | $5,000 |
| ALPHA TAU OMEGA FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ROCKY BOTTOM RETREAT & CONFERENCE CENTER FOR THE BLIND | $5,000 |
| USC SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $5,000 |
| PALMETTO FOUNDATION FOR PREVENTION & RECOVERY | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–20, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 15% of Bignon Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 72% of the giving stays in SC; read by stated purpose it is 70% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +20% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 6 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- PLPAWMETTO LIFELINE5× · 2020–2024 · $238k · revenue +9%
- FOFELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES5× · 2020–2024 · $118k · revenue +87%
University of South Carolina Educational Foundation4× · 2021–2024 · $100k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA ATHLETICSone grant, 2021 · $10k
- TBTRINITY BAPTIST CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $10k
- GWGOOD WORKS INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +56%
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.
The foundation exists to support sc firefighters and their families. support includes scholarships, need-based assistance, emotional support, grants to support non-government funded fire suppression needs, and public education.
Servants For Sight's mission is to help disadvantaged people, in South Carolina and in third world countries, get the eye care they need to lead productive lives. We provide eye exams, eyeglasses and surgery to poverty stricken and…
Promote pharmaceutical service
Serve needs of south carolina veterans
By focusing on the mission to enhance the development and growth of south carolina's life sciences industry ecosystem and by strengthening the state's workforce, education, innovation, and research infracstructure, the foundation works to…
The Southern Palmetto Foundation works to drive positive economic Impact foster regional talent and improve overall quality of life throughout the CSRA with a focus on Barnwell and Allendale Counties.
Support, promote, and defend the south carolina national guard and the ideals of service and sacrifice exemplified by its members and their families. the foundation serves and sustains the men and women of the south carolina national guard…
The organization's mission is to provide community activities to promote and advance law enforcement within south carolina including college scholarships and community outreach. the organization will also provide continuing profesional…
To develop, maintain, and promote the game of tennis.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Good Works Inc and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 40 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
17 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. 17 of the 33 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 PAWMETTO LIFELINE ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds University of South Carolina Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds GARNET TRUST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALPHA TAU OMEGA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WELVISTA ↗
- Who funds Palmetto Foundation for Prevention and Recovery ↗
- Who funds LIVING WATER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RICHLAND COUNTY SHERIFF'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CALHOUN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HARVEST HOPE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds GOOD WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds Saluda Shoals Foundation ↗
- Who funds Fisher House of Columbia Sc Inc ↗
- Who funds ROCKY BOTTOM CAMP OF THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
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: Central Carolina Community Foundation · Michael J Mungo Foundation · Kw Beverage Foundation Inc · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Bignon 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.
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.