· Public charity
Lowes Foundation
Lowes Foundation is focused on closing the skilled trades labor gap across the United States.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k5 grants · $125k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $150k
- $250k+28 grants · $18M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Maricopa County Community College District Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| The National Center for Construction Education and Research | $1,000,000 |
| Goodwill Industries International | $1,000,000 |
| Midlands Technical College Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| Central Piedmont Community College Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| Wiregrass Georgia Technical College Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| Sleep In Heavenly Peace | $916,150 |
| Baton Rouge Community College Foundation Inc | $850,000 |
| Trade Institute of Pittsburgh | $800,000 |
| Alaska Works Partnership Inc | $700,000 |
| SkillsUSA Inc | $700,000 |
| Community College of Baltimore County Foundation | $601,000 |
| Uncommon Construction | $600,000 |
| Moore Community House | $600,000 |
| Hope Renovations | $600,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 21% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 31% of Lowes Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 37% of the giving stays in NC; read by stated purpose it is 33% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
17 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 25 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, 36% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12M 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
- HFHabitat For Humanity Of The Charlotte Region2× · 2021–2022 · $3.6M · revenue +108%
- SISLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC4× · 2020–2025 · $3.0M · revenue +300%
- TNTHE NATIONAL CENTER FOR CONSTRUCTION EDU AND RESEARCH LTD2× · 2024–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +15%
Funded once
- RWRenaissance West Community Initiativeone grant, 2021 · $2.6M · revenue -42% · 63% of their budget
- MCMECKLENBURG COUNTYone grant, 2021 · $1.3M
- MGMississippi Gulf Coast Community College Foundation Incone grant, 2024 · $1.0M · revenue -43% · 34% of their budget
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.
Charlotte works serves job-seekers and businesses by providing resources to develop a skilled workforce that meets employer needs. the organization offers job-search workshops, individual coaching, networking opportunities, and training…
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
As an innovative social enterprise, The Stride Center's mission is to empower men and women facing barriers to employment to achieve economic self-sufficiency. We provide a comprehensive career development program that includes job skills…
Communityworks is a publicly supported organization and certified community development financial institution that provides funding to promote affordable housing and community development to help stabilize low wealth families and…
As an interdependent alliance of construction industry leaders, we are collectively committed to positively impacting the future of the industry by strengthening the safe, skilled, and sustainable craft workforce pipeline.
Philadelphia works, inc. develops and manages smart workforce solutions that respond to business needs and increases economic opportunity for all philadelphia residents.
To promote excellence and diversity in the construction industry by providing educational, training, and employment services.
NCWE promotes student success and excellence in education and training by providing the link between policy and practice.
Since 1965, we have been linking people with jobs by providing career planning, training and job placement assistance. we specialize in preparing individuals to enter the workforce, while meeting a critical need of the business community.
Train students to master essential skills they will take directly to the workforce enabling them to support their families strengthen the community and contribute to local industry while advancing their careers.
The mission of the community college preparatory academy public charter school is to provide the education and skills development to empower and prepare under-credited adults for postsecondary educational success, viable employment and…
Our mission is to increase socioeconomic mobility by building pathways to thriving careers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Madisonville College 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 31 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
122 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. 122 of the 180 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 Habitat For Humanity Of The Charlotte Region ↗
- Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds Renaissance West Community Initiative ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR CONSTRUCTION EDU AND RESEARCH LTD ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SKILLSUSA INC ↗
- Who funds She Built This City ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHARLOTTE INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF THE SOUTHERN PIEDMONT INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WIREGRASS GEORGIA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION-NORTH INC ↗
- Who funds Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH STATE COLLEGE FDN INC ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROOF ABOVE INC ↗
- Who funds MIDLANDS TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MARICOPA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MASTER'S APPRENTICE INC ↗
- Who funds BATON ROUGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA WOMEN WORK ↗
- Who funds Rebuilding Together of Greater Charlotte ↗
- Who funds TRADE INSTITUTE OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE COLLEGES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COCONINO COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Alaska Works Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds IVY TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO WOMEN IN TRADES ↗
- Who funds HOPE RENOVATIONS SPENCER ↗
- Who funds BERKELEY HEIGHTS PARENT TEACHER WILLIAM WOODRUFF SCHOOL PTO ↗
- Who funds unCommon Construction Inc ↗
- Who funds MOORE COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds WILKES COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VALENCIA COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ada Jenkins Families and Careers Development Center Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTH ALABAMA HOMEBUILDING ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE RESCUE MISSION ENDOWMENT ↗
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: United Way of Greater Charlotte Inc · Ally Charitable Foundation · Truist Foundation Inc · The Presbyterian Hospital · Foundation for the Carolinas · GenYOUTH Incorporated · The Leon Levine Foundation · Share Our Strength · Wells Fargo Foundation · Merancas Foundation Inc · American Association of Community Colleges · The Broad Center
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 Lowes 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.
- Goodwill Industries International Inc — 35% of income from government
- Making Opportunity Count Inc — 28% of income from government
- Historic Sotterley Inc — 28% of income from government
- Youth Crisis Center Inc — 4% of income from government
- Community Crisis Center Inc — 3% of income from government
- The National Center for Construction Edu and Research Ltd — 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.