· Private foundation
Carson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k31 grants · $109k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $90k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $23,000 |
| CROSSROADS OF AMERICA COUNCIL BSA | $23,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $14,000 |
| REFUGE CHURCH | $10,000 |
| CHARCOT MARIE TOOTH (CMT) RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| NINE LINE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SRT SERVICES | $8,000 |
| CAMP NICOLET FOUNDATION | $8,000 |
| JOSEPH MALEY FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| LIFESPRING MINISTRY SHELTER FOR WOMEN & CHILDREN-WAYSIDE CROSS MINISTRIES | $6,000 |
| WAYSIDE CROSS MINISTRIES (AKA LIFESPRING MINISTRY SHELTER) | $6,000 |
| BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | $6,000 |
| FREE SPEECH FOUNDATION (AKA AMERICA'S FRONTLINE DOCTORS) | $6,000 |
| CITIZEN JOURNALISM FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| ST KATHARINE DREXEL | $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 (FY20–24, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 5% 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.
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 +13% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
37 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 12 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47k 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
- CNCAMP NICOLET FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $27k · revenue +59%
- SSAVAnon2× · 2020–2021 · $16k · revenue +13%
AURORA UNIVERSITY3× · 2020–2022 · $14k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- TCTHE CUBIT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $2k · revenue +0%
- AIAGAPE INTERNATIONALone grant, 2021 · $2k
- KOKNIGHTS OF COLUMBUSone grant, 2022 · $1k
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.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
American foreign service association (afsa) is both the principal advocate for the long-term institutional wellbeing of the professional career foreign service and responsible for safeguarding the interest of afsa members. (continued on…
The union works to advocate and advance a public policy agenda to support and protect the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa. it works to maintain throughout the united states the rights of free…
Aauw advances gender equity for women and girls through research, education, and advocacy.
Augusta university research institute, inc. (the "institute") was incorporated under the laws of the state of georgia as a nonprofit corporation on july 31, 1980. the institute qualified as a tax-exempt corporation under section 501(c)(3)…
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
The peterson institute for international economics (piie) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical…
Ahip is the national trade association representing the health insurance industry. ahip's members provide health care coverage, services and solutions to more than 200 million americans. we are committed to market-based solutions and…
Support of the educational and research activities of the american university of armenia (aua).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Aurora Women's Empowerment 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 25 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 57 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 HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds JOSEPH MALEY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NINE LINE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP NICOLET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAVAnon ↗
- Who funds AT RISK MENTORING ↗
- Who funds AURORA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AURORA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds PROJECT VERITAS ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds AURORA AREA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds FREE SPEECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST SHELTER FOR HOMELESS VETERANS INC ↗
- Who funds CITIZEN JOURNALISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN RADIO INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds UNREACHED VILLAGES INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA VETERAN INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOC OF BIRTH DEFECT CHILDREN INC D/B/A BIRTH DEFECT RESEARCH FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY MUSIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN OF UGANDA ↗
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: Twelve Twenty-One Fund · Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · Dunham Fund · Juvenile Protective Association of Aurora Illinois · The Chicago Community Trust · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Carson 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Carson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Carson 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.