· Private foundation
Make a Difference Fund
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $35k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $201k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC - UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA | $201,000 |
| THE TRINITY FORUM | $15,000 |
| BE LOUD SOPHIE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CITY OF REFUGE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE MOREHEAD-CAIN SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ALEX'S LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| ECSU FOUNDATION FOR JOHNNY PFEFFERKOM | $1,000 |
| PEACEMAKERS OF ROCKY MOUNT | $1,000 |
| GUILFORD COUNTY SPORTS HALL OF FAME | $1,000 |
| NC COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–24, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 77% 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 +47% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 3 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- TETHE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC4× · 2017–2020 · $567k · revenue +79%
- TFTRINITY FORUM INC8× · 2017–2024 · $120k · revenue +86%
- BLBE LOUD SOPHIE FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $65k · revenue +194%
Funded once
- WTWORD TABERNACLE CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $100k
- NHNC HALL OF FAMEone grant, 2023 · $100k
- NWNC WESLEYAN COLLEGEone grant, 2017 · $15k
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.
We are a crisis pregnancy center offering assistance to all women with pregnancy related issues.
To unite the Church to transform the city through the power of the Gospel.
The south carolina ovarian cancer foundation (scocf) was created as an organization to support women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, to be a source of education and awareness about the disease to people across the state, and to support…
Inspiring philanthropy and strengthening our region through innovative community initiatives and quality services to donors and constituents.
The Alamance Community College Foundation exists to aid students with a demonstrated financial need in reaching their educational goals, while supporting the mission of ACC.
At The Childrens Center of Western North Carolina (TCC), we are dedicated to creating an inclusive, playful, and nuturing environment where children can grow and learn together in acceptance of one another.
To assist carteret general hospital in providing the best possible healthcare to the people of carteret county through fund raising programs that support community based programs, purchase of vital equipment, capital expansion, renovations…
The mission of the head for the cure foundation (hftc) is threefold: to build awareness, raise funding, and inspire hope for the community of brain cancer patients, their families, friends, caregivers and other supporters, while…
The mission of the north carolina global health alliance is to advance north carolina as an international center for research, training, education, advocacy and business dedicated to improving the health of the world's communities. we…
To pursue the development of research facilities and research projects for the university of north carolina at wilmington.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Educational Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Morehead-Cain Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 21 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 43 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 THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRINITY FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds BE LOUD SOPHIE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNT ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MOREHEAD-CAIN SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds THE MOREHEAD-CAIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds City of Refuge Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds FLASHES OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds ALEXS LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEACEMAKERS OF ROCKY MOUNT INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds GREENE COUNTY INTERFAITH VOLUNTEERS ↗
- Who funds GUILFORD COUNTY SPORTS HALL OF FAME INC ↗
- Who funds Karma Box Project ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds BEARE GARDEN PLANTATION ANIMAL RESCUE ↗
- Who funds Heroes Center Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BARD THEATER COMPANY ↗
- Who funds PREGNANCY CARE CENTER 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: Deleon Carter Foundation · North Carolina Community Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Make a Difference Fund 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 Make a Difference Fund?
Find your warmest path to Make a Difference Fund 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.