· Private foundation
McDowell Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 18 grants below total $185,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $211,900 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $26,400 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k16 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $37k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $105k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Taft School | $105,000 |
| Duke University | $36,950 |
| Community Foundation of Western North Carolina | $5,000 |
| The Sato Project | $5,000 |
| Jewish Museum | $5,000 |
| Daniel W. Offit Fund to Fight Glioblastoma | $5,000 |
| National Breast Cancer Coalition | $5,000 |
| World Monument Fund | $5,000 |
| Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Society | $2,500 |
| BGCNW | $2,000 |
| St. Theresa's Roman Catholic Church | $1,800 |
| North American Gamebird Foundation | $1,500 |
| Bedford Playhouse | $1,000 |
| One Tree Planted Inc | $1,000 |
| Gucker Campership Fund | $1,000 |
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 +105% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 10 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
DUKE UNIVERSITY3× · 2019–2024 · $394k · revenue +44%- TTTHE TAFT SCHOOL CORPORATION4× · 2019–2024 · $309k · revenue +107%
SHELBURNE FARMS3× · 2019–2023 · $165k · revenue +257%
Funded once
- WMWinifred Masterson Burke Medical Researchgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +28%
- NHNorthwell Health Fdtnone grant, 2019 · $20k
- PFPhysicians for Human Rigtsone grant, 2019 · $10k
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 baruch college fund is an organization engaged in generating, encouraging and promoting the educational welfare of the students of the bernard m. baruch college of the city university of new york.
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
North shore university hospital is part of northwell health ("northwell"), which strives to improve the health of the communities it serves and is committed to providing the highest quality clinical care; educating the current and future…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
The rockefeller university (the university) is a world renowned center for research and graduate education in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics, and physics. the university's 73 laboratories conduct both clinical and basic…
Northwell healthcare inc. coordinates policy making and strategic planning by providing advisory and administrative support services to affiliated health care organizations within northwell health; whose mission is to improve the health of…
Glen cove hospital is part of northwell health, inc. ("northwell"), which strives to improve the health of the communities it serves and is committed to providing the highest quality geriatric care; educating the current and future…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Northwell health is the parent company of a fully integrated health system that is committed to promote clinical care, health education, conduct biomedical research, and caring for the community regardless of ability to pay.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Taft School Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Walt Ronan Educational Fund Inc. 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 33 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
25 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. 25 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 RAYMOND JAMES CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE TAFT SCHOOL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SHELBURNE FARMS ↗
- Who funds Winifred Masterson Burke Medical Research ↗
- Who funds The Childrens Academy ↗
- Who funds THE SATO PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Teachers College Columbia University ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGED ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWELL HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DANIEL W OFFIT FUND TO FIGHT GLIOBLASTOMA INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BREAST CANCER COALITION ↗
- Who funds THE TOM COUGHLIN JAY FUND FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WOLF CONSERVATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLYTHEDALE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds BEDFORD PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds HEAD COUNT INC ↗
- Who funds GUCKER CAMPERSHIP FUND INC % RICHARD DEITCHMAN ↗
- Who funds ARTSCONNECTION 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: Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to McDowell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to McDowell 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.