· Private foundation
Duke Energy Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
92% of Duke Energy Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to American Online Giving Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 30 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Duke Energy Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 3958 organizations, $31M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2022
- Under $10k4614 grants · $4.0M
- $10k–50k507 grants · $9.7M
- $50k–250k80 grants · $6.5M
- $250k+13 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $5,366,943 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS | $1,359,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS | $815,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS | $763,000 |
| ANDREAS H BECHTLER ARTS FOUNDATION DBA BECHTLER MUSEUM OF MODERN ART | $500,000 |
| CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC | $500,000 |
| THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL | $330,800 |
| SCHOLARSHIP AMERICA INC | $279,440 |
| FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE INC | $275,000 |
| NC DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES | $253,336 |
| ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP OF NORTH CAROLINA INC | $250,000 |
| NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC | $250,000 |
| INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS - HIRE | $250,000 |
| FFA & ITS STATE ASSOCIATIONS & LOCAL CHAPTER SC FFA ASSOCIATION | $200,000 |
| PINELLAS COUNTY EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC | $180,000 |
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, $2.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 84% 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 +37% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
1325 repeat relationships — 1108 still active in FY2022, 217 since wound down; 267 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 49% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
- NCNORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2022 · $895k · revenue +364%
- FOFOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE3× · 2020–2022 · $888k · revenue +219%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches5× · 2020–2024 · $837k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- COCITY OF GREENVILLEone grant, 2020 · $500k
- STSHARE THE WARMTH CUST & EMPL - FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINASone grant, 2020 · $436k
- FTFeeding the Carolinasgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $250k · revenue +103%
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.
Providing actionable research, supporting industry clusters, and furthering education and workforce development.
A Christ-centered university committed to exceptional teaching, scholarly research, creative innovation, and professional collaboration.
Leading the development of a skilled and in-demand workforce by engaging businesses, aligning community partners, empowering and connecting job seeker to meaningful employer, and fostering inclusive economic growth.
Advance a high quality, comprehensive, accountable early childhood system that benefits each child in north carolina beginning with a healthy birth.
Be the leading voice for business in south carolina.
An academic and social community that unites the liberal arts and Judeo-Christian values.
The purpose is to provide educational, employment and financial assistance to low income residents of union, anson and richmond counties, n.c.
Columbia college provides educational opportunities that develop students' capacity for critical thought and expression, life-long learning, acceptance of personal responsibilty, and commitment to service and social justice.
Mobilizing the power of our community to break the cycle of poverty.
Provide quality healthcare to the people of edgecombe, nash and wilson counties.
Provide healthy food to hungry children, empowering them to succeed in the classroom and in their community
The nccee provides economic and financial education for educators and students throughout north carolina. this mission is accomplished through standards based workshops and a variety of resources for educators, academic competitions for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Free Will Baptist Children's Home Inc and the most unlike its peers is Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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 27 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
1402 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. 1402 of the 2,000 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHARLOTTE INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP OF NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds HEART OF FLORIDA UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY SUNCOAST INC ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI USA REGIONAL CHAMBER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PINELLAS COUNTY EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROOF ABOVE INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NCINNOVATION INC ↗
- Who funds MYFUTURENCINC ↗
- Who funds E4E RELIEF LLC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE GREATER TRIANGLE INC ↗
- Who funds CLEMSON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE NC STATE MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds HARVEST HOPE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds INDIANA COMMUNITY ACTION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE-SUMTER STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG AFRO-AMERICAN CULTURAL AND SERVICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds University of South Florida Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MINT MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART 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 loosely connected circle, clustered around a few shared anchors.
Open a dossier: The Leon Levine Foundation · United Way of Greater Charlotte Inc · The Presbyterian Hospital · The Dickson Foundation Inc · Merancas Foundation Inc · Womens Impact Fund · The Cannon Foundation Inc · Philip L Van Every Foundation · Andrew Jergens Foundation · Millstone Fund · John a Schroth Family Char Tr · Elsa M Heisel Sule Charitable Trust 2005
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 Duke Energy 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Feeding Florida Inc — 32% of income from government
- Boys and Girls Club of North Central Florida Inc — 31% of income from government
- United Way of Pasco County Inc — 17% of income from government
- Alachua Conservation Trust Inc — 5% of income from government
- Orlando Science Centerinc — 4% of income from government
- United Way of Marion County Inc — 4% of income from government
- AmSkills Inc — 3% of income from government
- Volunteer Florida Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- United Way of Lake and Sumter Counties Inc — 1% of income from government
- Clearwater Marine Aquarium Inc — 1% of income from government
- United Way Suncoast Inc — 1% of income from government
- Bok Tower Gardens Inc — 1% of income from government
- United Arts of Central Florida Inc — 1% of income from government
- Eckerd College — 0% of income from government
- Heart of Florida United Way Inc — 0% of income from government
- Pasco Education Foundation 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 Duke Energy Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Duke Energy 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.