· Private foundation
Bill and Sharon Allen 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 $10k3 grants · $5k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $496k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $300k
- $250k+1 grant · $270k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Arts Plus | $270,000 |
| Paramount Institute of Cosmetic Arts | $200,000 |
| Knothole Foundation | $100,000 |
| Carolina Thread Trail | $35,500 |
| RIGHT MOVES FOR YOUTH INC | $30,000 |
| PHILIPS ACADEMY OF NORTH CAROLINA INC | $30,000 |
| PIRATES CHARITIES | $30,000 |
| YMCA OF GREATER CHARLOTTE | $30,000 |
| CHARLOTTE KNIGHTS CHARITIES | $30,000 |
| Good Samaritan Haven | $30,000 |
| LIFESPAN INC | $25,000 |
| Least of These Carolinas | $25,000 |
| charlotte speech and hearing center | $20,000 |
| Freedom communities | $20,000 |
| CLASSROOM CENTRAL | $20,000 |
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, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
33 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $201k 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
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER CHARLOTTE5× · 2020–2024 · $650k · revenue +12%
- AArtsPlus5× · 2020–2024 · $600k · revenue +151%
- KFKNOTHOLE FOUNDATION KNOTHOLE FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $529k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- TRTEXAS RANGERS BASEBALL FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +54%
MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +1%- MCMUSTAND CLUBone grant, 2022 · $6k
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.
Autism Charlotte's misison is to embrace and empower children and families affected by autism. We envision a community where every family navigation autism is supported with knowledge, resources, warmth, and understanding.
Carolina ballet's mission is to perform world-class professional ballet, entertaining and enlightening audiences in raleigh, the triangle region, the state of north carolina, and beyond. carolina ballet works to accomplish this mission by…
Carolina collaborative prep (ccp) is a non-profit academic center that serves students in grades 3-12 with learning differences, empowering them to thrive in school and in life.
Carolina Teen Center is a prevention and education year-round after-school and summer program that services youth and their families. Literacy programs, tutoring, life skills, mentoring, positive peer groups, conflict resolution skills,…
Christopher Kids is a nonprofit corporation that serves children by fostering hope and imagination through specialized, accessible, and personalized spaces. We are dedicated to serving children ages two to twelve in the Southeast facing…
Our mission is to provide high-quality education and support for children in need through partnership with their families. our vision is to positively affect the future of children at risk by improving economic mobility through education.…
Founded in 1886, thompson child & family focus is called to strengthen children, families, and communitiesdelivering measurable outcomes through healing, teaching, worship, and play. for more than a century, thompson has transformed lives…
To provide support to lowcountry children with birth defects and/or childhood diseases.
SHARE Charlotte is building a better Charlotte by empowering nonprofits and helping people invest in their communities in ways that matter most to them.
Charlotte pride creates programs and activites to enrich, empower, strengthen and make visable the unique lives and experiences of lgbtq people in charlotte.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girls On the Run International Inc and the most unlike its peers is Muscular Dystrophy Association 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 26 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 6% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 40 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 YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER CHARLOTTE ↗
- Who funds ArtsPlus ↗
- Who funds KNOTHOLE FOUNDATION KNOTHOLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds PARAMOUNT INSTITUTE OF COSMETIC ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Right Moves for Youth Inc ↗
- Who funds Philips Academy of North Carolina Inc ↗
- Who funds PIRATES CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds LIFESPAN INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE KNIGHTS CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds CAROLINA THREAD TRAIL ↗
- Who funds ALEXANDER YOUTH NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CLASSROOM CENTRAL INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center Inc ↗
- Who funds GIRLS ON THE RUN INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT BLESSINGS ↗
- Who funds CAMP LUCK INC ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY ORPHAN RELIEF ↗
- Who funds Least of These Carolinas ↗
- Who funds The Spokes Group Inc ↗
- Who funds Furnish For Good Inc ↗
- Who funds TEXAS RANGERS BASEBALL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds EXTRA MILE EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BRADLEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE BALLET ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE'S FINEST LEGACY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PRESTON BRADLEY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MONTOUR TRAIL COUNCIL ↗
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: Foundation for the Carolinas · Duke Energy Foundation · United Way of Greater Charlotte Inc · Merancas Foundation Inc · The Leon Levine Foundation · Speedway Children's Charities · Albemarle Foundation · The Winston-Salem Foundation · Hooptee Charities Inc · Womens Impact Fund · The Eleanor H Barnhardt Charitable Trust · Foundation for the Charlotte Jewish Community
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 Bill and Sharon Allen 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.
- Good Samaritan Haven Inc — 63% 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.