· Public charity
Charlotte Sports Foundation
The Charlotte Sports Foundation is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization created in 2013 to provide leadership for sports-based initiatives that enhance the economy and quality of life in the Charlotte region.
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.
The 9 grants below total $8,276,196 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $20,639,154 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $12,362,958 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 · FY2025
- $50k–250k3 grants · $500k
- $250k+6 grants · $7.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Virginia Tech University | $2,600,000 |
| University of Minnesota | $2,450,000 |
| Atlantic Coast Conference | $1,851,140 |
| University of Oklahoma | $300,000 |
| University of Michigan | $291,685 |
| University of Florida | $283,371 |
| University of Iowa | $200,000 |
| NC State Treasurer | $150,000 |
| University of South Carolina | $150,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 91% of your 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 +98% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 1 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.5M 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
- ACATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE9× · 2017–2025 · $28M · revenue +98%
- SCSOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE4× · 2017–2022 · $9.2M · revenue +71%
- NSNC STATE UNIVERSITY3× · 2018–2025 · $3.3M
Funded once
- CUCLEMSON UNIVERSITY2× · 2018–2022 · $5.0M
- UOUNIVERSITY OF GEORGIAone grant, 2022 · $5.0M
- UOUNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIAone grant, 2020 · $2.5M
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 conference is committed to providing quality athletics competition integral to and consistent with its member institutions' academic missions. the conference is dedicated to providing opportunities for student-athletes to achieve their…
The mission of the NECC is to provide for athletic competition among institutions that share similar academic aspirations and are committed to the importance of the total educational experience for students engaged in sports.The NECC…
The conference is committed to providing student-athletes an exemplary university experience - both on and off the field of play. with high standards of integrity at the core of our athletic and academic excellences, our goal is to unlock…
The organization operates an inter-collegiate athletic conference in 23 college sports for 12 member and 2 associate member schools. The 12 member schools are Allegheny College, Bethany College, Chatham University, Franciscan University,…
The american conference's mission is to provide students with the highest quality education and level of competition. working together with a collective strength and spirit, our universities are committed to our students' health and…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
The midwest conference is an interstate league among similarly minded institutions - those which give primary attention to the educational purposes of athletics. member institutions believe that participation in sport enhances the…
Lewis & clark is a premier private higher education institution offering an exceptional education in an inclusive environment. by fostering critical thinking, innovation, creativity, civic engagement, and leadership, both inside and…
Benedictine college's mission as a catholic, benedictine, liberal arts, residential college is the education of men and women within a community of faith & scholarship.
To facilitate intercollegiate athletics competition for both men and women, promote a proper balance between academics and athletics, foster integrity and excellence in both athletics and academics, foster competitive amateur opportunities…
The mission of the conference is to enhance intercollegiate competition among its member institutions and to focus on the welfare of the student athlete. the conference and its members are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Atlantic Coast Conference and the most unlike its peers is 100 Black Men of Charlotte Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 26 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.
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: National Collegiate Athletic Association · Folds of Honor Foundation · Tulsa Community 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 Charlotte Sports 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.