· Private foundation
Carl W Meares Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FAIR BLUFF BAPTIST CHURCH | $6,000 |
| WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| THE FIRST TEE OF GREATER CHARLESTON | $4,000 |
| PORTER-GAUD SCHOOL | $3,500 |
| BUIST ACADEMY FOUNDATION | $3,500 |
| VIRGINIA EPISCOPAL SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| UNC PEMBROKE FOUNDATION INC | $2,500 |
| SOUTHEASTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FDN | $2,500 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $2,500 |
| DUKE CANCER INSTITUTE | $2,000 |
| UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL - DIVISION OF ATHLETICS | $2,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| CCC EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE FUND | $1,500 |
| SPRING ISLAND EMPLOYEE FUND | $1,000 |
| THE LILIBET SNELLINGS KYTE FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 90% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +36% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
43 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k 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
- WFWOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +47%
- FTFIRST TEE GREATER CHARLESTON7× · 2019–2025 · $28k · revenue +398%
- BABuist Academy Foundation9× · 2017–2025 · $28k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- SWSTILL WORTHY INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +54%
- TFTIGER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $2k · revenue -29%
- LCLower Cape Fear Hospice Incorporated dba Lower Cape Fear LifeCareone grant, 2024 · $1k · revenue -5%
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 mission of the charleston school of law foundation inc is to encourage and assist the study, teaching, promoting and research of the rule of law in charleston, south carolina and all related subject areas as determined by the board of…
To make strategic, catalytic investments and provide expertise and technical assistance to educational organizations across south carolina.
To operate a health care system providing medical excellence to the eastern region of south carolina and the extreme southeastern region of north carolina.
Enhancing the quality of life for all south carolinians, achieving global competiteveness and ultimately increasing prosperity for sc citizens.
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…
Mcleod physician associates ii operates as a part of the mcleod health system. the mission of mcleod health is to improve the overall health and well being of people living within south carolina and eastern north carolina by providing…
Healing all people with compassion, faith, and excellence.
The schs mission is to expand, preserve, and make accessible our invaluable collection, and to encourage interest and pride in the rich history of our state.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Medical University of South Carolina Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Tiger Foundation. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 56 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 WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FIRST TEE GREATER CHARLESTON ↗
- Who funds Buist Academy Foundation ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds SPRING ISLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CAPE FEAR COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS HOMES OF NC INC ↗
- Who funds GOOD FRIENDS OF THE LOWCOUNTRY ↗
- Who funds ASHEVILLE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MARS HILL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PORT ROYAL SOUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Aquarium ↗
- Who funds MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Blake King Corp ↗
- Who funds CAROLINAS GOLF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STILL WORTHY INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Museum of the Lowcountry ↗
- Who funds YEAMANS HALL CLUB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Charleston Parks Conservancy ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND CLINIC 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: Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Henry & Sylvia Yaschik Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · North Carolina Community Foundation · Mike & Carolyn Jones Foundation · Pathfinder Foundation Inc · Laurel Charitable Trust · Dan and Merrie Boone Foundation Inc · Foundation for the Carolinas · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · The Ayco Charitable 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 Carl W Meares Foundation 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Carl W Meares Foundation 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.