· Public charity
Meet The Needs Charleston
To eliminate some of the burden the area soup kitchens and shelters are facing in todays economic environment and to administer an educational program in area high schools that provides job readiness training for individuals who wish to enter the hospitality workforce.
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 14 grants below total $830,760 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $870,033 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $39,273 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $153k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $665k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Neighbors Together | $210,000 |
| Our Lady of Mercy | $205,100 |
| One 80 Place | $200,000 |
| Manna Food Bank | $50,000 |
| Ben's Friend | $30,000 |
| Southern Smoke Foundation | $25,000 |
| Star Gospel Mission | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,160 |
| East Cooper Community Outreach | $10,000 |
| East Cooper Meals On Wheels | $10,000 |
| Arts AVL | $7,500 |
| MUSC Foundation | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 23% of Meet The Needs Charleston’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, 84% of the giving stays in SC; read by stated purpose it is 72% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +42% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 8 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $166k 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
- OPOne-Eighty Place9× · 2017–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +149%
- BFBEN'S FRIENDS7× · 2018–2025 · $327k · revenue +419% · 80% of their budget
- ECEAST COOPER MEALS ON WHEELS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $155k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- NHNEIGHBORHOOD HOUSEone grant, 2017 · $81k
- CCARTAone grant, 2017 · $46k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $19k
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.
Our mission is to rescue and transport surplus food to qualified non profit agencies and churches. these agencies fulfill a priority need by distributing food to needy and disadvantaged families in three counties of sc.
The mission of the Organization is to coordinate, support, and advocate for member Food Banks across the Carolinas to create lasting solutions to address hunger.
Harvest hope is on a mission to eliminate hunger and food insecurity in south carolina. we rescue nutritious food from stores throughout the state and distribute it to food pantries, shelters, and soup kitchens. we operate programs that…
To foster basic living, service and safety assistance needs for our Midlands families. To lend a hand up to those in need. To work closely with local law enforcement, public servants, and the private sector to embrace our Midlands…
Feeding Charlotte rescues surplus, freshly prepared meals to reduce food waste and feed the hungry. We believe no food should be wasted while people go hungry in our community. To make this possible, we pickup unused, excess freshly…
Convene and connect diverse stakeholders to align and catalyze efforts to improve health and well-being for communities across South Carolina.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Our Lady of Mercy Community Outreach Services and the most unlike its peers is Heart of the House Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 29 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 Neighbors Together Inc ↗
- Who funds One-Eighty Place ↗
- Who funds OUR LADY OF MERCY COMMUNITY OUTREACH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds BEN'S FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds EAST COOPER MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds East Cooper Community Outreach ↗
- Who funds Pay it Forward Charleston ↗
- Who funds MANNA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds Southern Smoke Foundation ↗
- Who funds STAR GOSPEL MISSION ↗
- Who funds Roper St Francis Foundation ↗
- Who funds ASHEVILLE AREA ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON AREA SENIOR CITIZENS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds HEART OF THE HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRIDENT LITERACY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Henry & Sylvia Yaschik Foundation Inc · Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · Trident United Way · The Joanna Foundation · Central Carolina Community Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Medical Society of South Carolina · Kuznik Charitable Foundation · Post and Courier Foundation · Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina · Therblig Foundation · Roper St Francis Healthcare
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 Meet The Needs Charleston 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 Meet The Needs Charleston?
Find your warmest path to Meet The Needs Charleston 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.