· Public charity
Carolina Farm Stewardship Association
The association's mission is helping the carolinas grow and eat local, organic food.
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.
The 17 grants below total $1,485,963 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,975,271 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $489,308 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k5 grants · $146k
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRACTOR FOOD & FARMS | $201,745 |
| FRESHLIST LLC | $197,905 |
| MEN AND WOMEN UNITED FOR YOUTH AND FAMILIES CDC | $136,092 |
| FARMER FOODSHARE INC | $120,778 |
| GLOW HOUSE AGRICULTURE INC | $120,482 |
| WORKING LANDSCAPES | $114,197 |
| OPERATION SPEING PLANT | $107,416 |
| WNC FROM THE GROUND UP | $95,601 |
| CONETOE FAMILY LIFE CENTER | $70,986 |
| FEAST DOWN EAST INC | $62,507 |
| BLACK FARMERS HUB LLC | $58,594 |
| CENTER FOR THIRD WORLD ORGANIZING | $53,722 |
| SANDHILLS AGINNOVATION CENTER | $41,372 |
| BLUE RIDGE WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE | $37,203 |
| THE PRODUCE BOX LLC | $34,115 |
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, $216k) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, 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.
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 +99% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- TRToe River Aggregation Center Training Organization Regional Inc3× · 2022–2024 · $730k · revenue +82% · 56% of their budget
- SASANDHILLS AGINNOVATION CENTER INC5× · 2020–2024 · $716k · revenue +651% · 60% of their budget
FARMER FOODSHARE INC4× · 2020–2024 · $463k · revenue +24%
Funded once
The Abundance Foundation Incone grant, 2022 · $288k · revenue -10%- SRSOUTHEAST RALEIGH VICINITY EMERGINGone grant, 2020 · $129k
- TBT&A BARBEE FAMILY FARM LLC DBA BARBEE FARMSone grant, 2020 · $52k
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.
To create a thriving, equitable food system by working with local farms to provide crucial access to fresh produce to food insecure people in Cleveland County.
The hub city farmers' market is a nonprofit community organization that aims to increase supply, demand, and access to healthy, local foods in spartanburg, south carolina.
Our mission is to engage our neighbors around locally grown, fresh foods to support local farmers and food artisans, educate on healthy eating, and eliminate food insecurity in our charlotte community.
To provide accessibility to heathful, regionally grown or produced food for all residents and vistors regardless of income levels. to provide an educational forum for consumers to learn the uses and benefits of quality, locally grown or…
Restoring Hope Center, Inc. is a benovolence organization operating in Laurinburg, NC. The organization has benevolence programs providing food and supplies to the local area, supplies other smaller like-kind organizations, conducts a…
Together we connect, share, and celebrate nutritious food, education and community.
Local food distribution and community education
To initiate and facilitate collaborative action toward a just, resilient, and sustainable food system that ensures equitable access for all people to enough healthy food.
The NWF2F DBA Minority Growers Collective is a 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit founded in February of 2021 to meet the education, training, and financial assistance needs of agricultural growers and producers of color and meet the needs of…
To support a community-led food system in WNC that is regenerative, resilient, and equitable by strengthening regional connection and cultivating cross-sector collaboration.
The center for an agricultural economy supports rural communities and working landscapes by building a more interconnected local food system.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Working Landscapes and the most unlike its peers is Center for Third World Organizing. 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 15 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 8% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 37 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 Toe River Aggregation Center Training Organization Regional Inc ↗
- Who funds SANDHILLS AGINNOVATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FARMER FOODSHARE INC ↗
- Who funds WORKING LANDSCAPES ↗
- Who funds CONETOE FAMILY LIFE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds The Abundance Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds FEAST DOWN EAST INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE RIDGE WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE ↗
- Who funds MEN & WOMEN UNITED FOR YOUTH & FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Third World Organizing ↗
- Who funds MCDOWELL LFAC ↗
- Who funds Catawba Farm and Food Coalition ↗
- Who funds NC BUDGET & TAX CENTER ↗
- Who funds PARTNER COMMUNITY CAPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Bountiful Cities Project ↗
- Who funds EL CENTRO HISPANO INC ↗
- Who funds PENDER COUNTY CHRISTIAN SVCS INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL & EASTERN NC INC ↗
- Who funds Upstream Works ↗
- Who funds Davidson County Local Food Network ↗
- Who funds ROBESON COUNTY CHURCH AND COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
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 Conservation Fund a Nonprofit Corporation · Z Smith Reynolds Foundation Inc · The Cannon Foundation Inc · The Golden Leaf Inc · Foundation for the Carolinas · North Carolina Community Foundation · Dogwood Health Trust · Mdc Inc · Blueprint North Carolina · Duke University · Triangle Community Foundation Inc · Upstream Works
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 Carolina Farm Stewardship Association 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.