· Public charity
Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Inc
Preserving, interpreting, and developing the heritage resources of the North Carolina mountains.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 48% of Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Inc’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 · FY2022
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $29k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $102k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OTHER VARIOUS 5000 | $101,719 |
| ALLEGHANY JAM | $16,000 |
| ALTAPASS FOUNDATION | $12,820 |
| WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY | $6,779 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–17, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
10 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2022, 8 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- WAWILL AND DENI MCINTYRE FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2021 · $47k · revenue +28%
- MCMadison County Arts Council2× · 2019–2021 · $24k · revenue +147%
- NCNorth Carolina Folklife Institute2× · 2019–2021 · $21k · revenue +163%
Funded once
- SHSOUTHERN HIGHLANDS RESERVE INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $16k · revenue +656%
- SHSOUTHERN HIGHLAND HANDICRAFT GUILDone grant, 2018 · $16k · revenue -2%
- BRBLUE RIDGE PARKWAY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $16k · revenue +95%
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 preservation of the heritage and history of Rockingham County, North Carolina
Preserving, interpreting, and developing the heritage resources of the North Carolina mountains.
The upcountry history museum connects people, history and culture.
Preserve culture and heritage Appalachia
To provide experiences in the visual and performing arts
To promote the arts in caldwell county, nc
preserve heritage of hand made crafts
Cultural and educational resource
To explore and educate the public about traditional culture and folklife in northern new york.
To sponsor and encourage the cultural arts in watauga county nc
The Historical Society provides information to the public concerning the historical events in the area. The Society also helps with the restoration of historical
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wilkes Heritage Museum Inc and the most unlike its peers is Southern Highlands Reserve Inc. 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 29 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 35 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 WILL AND DENI MCINTYRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CULTURAL PRESERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds Madison County Arts Council ↗
- Who funds North Carolina Folklife Institute ↗
- Who funds The North Carolina Arboretum Society ↗
- Who funds John C Campbell Folk School Inc ↗
- Who funds ALTAPASS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SURRY ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ALLEGHANY JAM ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS RESERVE INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN HIGHLAND HANDICRAFT GUILD ↗
- Who funds BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TOE RIVER ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds WILKES HERITAGE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Museum of the Cherokee People ↗
- Who funds Mainspring Conservation Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds LOST PROVINCE CENTER FOR THE CULTURAL ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE BLOWING ROCK ART & HISTORY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds THE FOREST STEWARDS GUILD ↗
- Who funds Western North Carolina Historical Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Penland School Of Craft ↗
- Who funds SMOKY MOUNTAIN HOST OF NC ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR APPALACHIAN MUSICIANS INC ↗
- Who funds Macon County Heritage Center ↗
- Who funds WARREN WILSON COLLEGE ↗
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: The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina Inc · North Carolina Humanities Council · The Cannon Foundation Inc · Co Tua Marion S Covington Fdn · Dogwood Health Trust · The Winston-Salem Foundation · North Carolina Community Foundation · Duke Energy Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc
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 Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Inc 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 Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Inc?
Find your warmest path to Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Inc 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.