· Private foundation
Elizabeth Calvin Bonner Foundation
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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MACCALLUM MORE MUSEUM AND GARDENS | $4,000 |
| PRESTWOOD FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| RESPITE CARE OF CHARLESTON | $2,000 |
| FRIENDS OF HAMPTON PLANTATION | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| STRIDES OF STRENGTH THERAPEUTIC RIDING | $1,000 |
| FISHING CREEK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $1,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BUTLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| SAVE OUR HERITAGE | $1,000 |
| TURTLE SURVIVAL ALLIANCE | $1,000 |
| WATER MISSION | $600 |
| CASC MEALS ON WHEELS CHARLESTON | $500 |
| LOWCOUNTRY FOOD BANK | $500 |
| COLLETON COUNTY HISTORICAL & PERSERV SOC | $500 |
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 (FY19–25, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
36 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- MMMacCallum More Museum & Gardens7× · 2019–2025 · $30k · revenue +88%
- RCRESPITE CARE OF CHARLESTON7× · 2019–2025 · $8k · revenue +45%
- CCCOLLETON COUNTY HISTORICAL AND PRESERVATION SOCIETY6× · 2020–2025 · $6k · revenue +18% · 37% of their budget
Funded once
- STSAVE THE LIGHT INCone grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -13%
- SASPIRE ART SERVICESone grant, 2024 · $1k
- ECEPWORTH CHILDREN'S HOMEgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $300 · revenue +96%
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.
Since its founding, our mission has always stayed the same: the prevention of cruelty to animals. in 1874, charleston animal society became the first animal organization in south carolina and one of the first in the nation and has never…
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.
Dorchester Paws strives to instill humane principles into society through the prevention of cruelty to animals.
Provide loving care & home for approx 120 Feral Cats that are in danger out in streets/unadoptable. TNR projects for feral cat colonies around Horry County. Provide Vet & medication care for animals in-house.
The mission of historic charleston foundation is to advocate for a future for charleston that honors and protects its people, places, culture, and community.
To provide veterinary care, vaccines, medicine, food and a nurturing environment to restore animals from abused and neglected situations to a healthy life.
Charleston waterkeeper's mission it to protect and restore charleston's waterways for our community and future generations. we do that through an effective mix of boots-on-the-water stewardship and data-driven advocacy designed to protect…
(See Schedule O)
To protect and preserve buildings of architectural and historial significance in South Carolina.
To educate Charleston area residents and visitors about the natural and cultural history of the South Carolina Lowcountry through collections, exhibitions, preservation, conservation, research and related programming.
The Preservation Society of Charleston is dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of Charleston's distinct character, quality of life and diverse neighborhoods.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Water Missions International and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 44 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 MacCallum More Museum & Gardens ↗
- Who funds RESPITE CARE OF CHARLESTON ↗
- Who funds Save Our Heritage Inc ↗
- Who funds STRIDES OF STRENGTH THERAPEUTIC SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds COLLETON COUNTY HISTORICAL AND PRESERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds HARVEST FREE MEDICAL CLINIC ↗
- Who funds WATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds PET HELPERS INC ↗
- Who funds Canines for Service Inc ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds THE TURTLE SURVIVAL ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Charleston Horticultural Society ↗
- Who funds JAMES ISLAND OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds A Father's Place ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds Landmarks for Families Inc ↗
- Who funds CONFEDERATE HOME AND COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON AREA THERAPEUTIC RIDING INC ↗
- Who funds REIN AND SHINE REIN AND SHINE ↗
- Who funds Charleston Bridge Club Inc ↗
- Who funds CAROLINA WILDLIFE CARE INC ↗
- Who funds Charleston County Parks Foundation Inc ↗
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 · The Joanna Foundation · Post and Courier Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Henry & Sylvia Yaschik Foundation Inc · The Mark Elliott Motley Foundation Inc · Central Carolina Community Foundation · Kuznik Charitable Foundation · John Winthrop Charitable Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Network for Good
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 Elizabeth Calvin Bonner 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Elizabeth Calvin Bonner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Elizabeth Calvin Bonner 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.