· Private foundation
Brinkley 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $7k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $81k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $307k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GARDNER WEBB UNIVERSITY | $175,000 |
| KINGS MOUNTAIN TOUCHDOWN CLUB | $132,000 |
| CLEVELAND COUNTY SCHOOLS | $28,525 |
| ROTARY CLUB OF VALDESE | $12,500 |
| 4 PAWS FOR ABILITY | $10,000 |
| THE OPTIMIST CLUB OF KINGS MOUNTAIN | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| NORTHVIEW CHURCH | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITY MATH ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| MOFFITT FAMILY FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| CLEVELAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 29% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 13% of Brinkley 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, 100% of the giving stays in NC; read by stated purpose it is 97% — 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 +67% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 5 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $44k 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
- GUGARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY7× · 2017–2024 · $920k · revenue +15%
- CCCleveland County Schools Educational Foundation Inc5× · 2017–2021 · $415k · revenue +234% · 67% of their budget
- WCWESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2023 · $332k · revenue +129%
Funded once
- TOTown of Valdese Parks and Recreation Departmentone grant, 2021 · $50k
- PBPISGAH BOOSTER CLUBone grant, 2022 · $10k
- CCCleveland County Abuse Prevention Council Incone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue -15%
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.
Provide the highest quality, patient-centered health care services for low-income and other underserved individuals.
To provide fire protection to the crooked creek community of mcdowell county north carolina
To promote community based primary health care systems in medically underserved areas.
The Yadkin Valley Chamber of Commerce is an organization that promotes a positive business environment, community betterment and supports economic development
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.
The mission of the american physical therapy association - north carolina (apta nc) is to improve the health, function and quality of life of individuals by representing, promoting and advancing the profession and best pracitce of physical…
The Alamance Community College Foundation exists to aid students with a demonstrated financial need in reaching their educational goals, while supporting the mission of ACC.
The United Way of Cleveland County helps people by uniting resources and programs to responsibly meet the needs of our community.
Carolina college of biblical studies exists to disciple christ-followers, through biblical higher education, for a lifetime of effective servant leadership.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hospice of Cleveland County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bethlehem Volunteer Fire Department Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
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 47 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 KINGS MOUNTAIN TOUCHDOWN CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds GARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Cleveland County Schools Educational Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Kings Mountain Elite Club ↗
- Who funds PURPLE HEART HOMES INC ↗
- Who funds Cleveland County Family YMCA Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MATH ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Cleveland County Abuse Prevention Council Inc ↗
- Who funds 4 PAWS FOR ABILITY INC ↗
- Who funds Kings Mountain Little Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF CLEVELAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Cleveland Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
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: Albemarle Foundation · Duke Energy Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas · The Paul and Margaret Porter Charitable Foundation · The Neisler Foundation TUA · Dover Foundation Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Brinkley 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Brinkley Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Brinkley Family Foundation 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.