· Community foundation
Polk County Community Foundation Inc
To administer funds entrusted to support charitable, cultural, educational and publicly beneficial activities in the community centered in and around Polk County, N.C.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 44 grants below total $2,596,958 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,816,454 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $219,496 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 $10k5 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $484k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+2 grants · $557k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Conserving Carolina | $302,630 |
| Thermal Belt Outreach Ministry | $254,358 |
| Polk County Schools | $229,182 |
| FENCE | $170,946 |
| Tryon Fine Arts Center | $170,009 |
| Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross | $103,880 |
| Tryon Arts & Crafts Inc | $98,262 |
| Tryon Little Theater | $83,500 |
| Lanier Library Association | $82,559 |
| Tryon Garden Club Inc | $75,062 |
| Housing Assistance | $73,057 |
| Tryon Painters & Sculptors | $70,870 |
| St Luke's Hospital Foundation | $64,504 |
| Polk County Governmennt | $62,461 |
| Tryon First Baptist Church | $61,307 |
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 (FY19–24, $76k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +32% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 11 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $362k 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
- TBTHERMAL BELT OUTREACH MINISTRY INC6× · 2019–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +70%
- FEFoothills Equestrian Nature Center Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $986k · revenue +61% · 35% of their budget
- TATRYON ARTS AND CRAFTS INC6× · 2019–2024 · $686k · revenue +22% · 55% of their budget
Funded once
- ALACTS LEGACY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2022 · $9k · revenue +21%
- COCity of Landrumone grant, 2022 · $7k
- HCHenderson County & Thermal Belt Habitat for Humanityone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -2%
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.
History museum
Promotion and presentation of art and cultural events in person county, north carolina.
Durham central park is an exciting downtown destination that offers a venue for cultural activities and is part of a 24-hour, authentic, walkable, neighborhood for arts, recreation and locally owned businesses.
To administer funds entrusted to support charitable, cultural, educational and publicly beneficial activities in the community centered in and around Polk County, N.C. both by directly expending sums for such purposes and in cooperation…
Triangle land conservancy (tlc) strives to create a healthier and more vibrant triangle region by safeguarding clean water, protecting natural habitats, supporting local farms, and connecting people with nature through land protection and…
Promote cultural activities in colleton county, south carolina
Promoting economic and industrial development in rowan county, north carolina
To provide high quality venues and performing arts for the Highlands - Cashiers community.
Tar river land conservancy preserves the natural and cultural resources of the tar river basin and surrounding areas by working in partnership with private landowners, public agencies and others to protect rural land, riparian corridors…
To promote arts in the community and local schools.
Preservation of historic equestrian trail system
Provide cultural and artistic programs for the public of Wilkes County, NC and the surrounding area
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tryon Arts and Crafts Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Saluda Pop-Up Pantry. 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 35 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 55 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 TRYON FINE ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THERMAL BELT OUTREACH MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds Foothills Equestrian Nature Center Inc ↗
- Who funds TRYON ARTS AND CRAFTS INC ↗
- Who funds St Luke's Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds LANIER LIBRARY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRYON LITTLE THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds UPSTAIRS ARTSPACE INC ↗
- Who funds Conserving Carolina ↗
- Who funds FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds TRYON PAINTERS & SCULPTORS INC ↗
- Who funds SALUDA COMMUNITY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds STEPS TO HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds TRYON GARDEN CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds UNITY IN THE COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Foothills Humane Society Inc ↗
- Who funds ROSELAND COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS THEATER FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds TRYON DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIAT ↗
- Who funds Big BrothersBig Sisters of WNC Inc ↗
- Who funds THE HOUSING ASSISTANCE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF TRYON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Saluda Depot Museum ↗
- Who funds TRYON CONCERT ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds MountainTrue ↗
- Who funds St Lukes Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE SALUDA POP-UP PANTRY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION of Greater Spartanburg ↗
- Who funds Go Global NC Council Inc ↗
- Who funds PISGAH LEGAL SERVICES ↗
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: The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina Inc · Dogwood Health Trust · Gateway Wellness Foundation · Carolina Foothills Foundation · Community Foundation of Henderson County Inc · Marjorie M & Lawrence R Bradley Endowment Fund · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · The Dobbs Family Charitable Foundation Trust Agreement · J M Smith Foundation · The Cannon Foundation Inc · The Holl Foundation · The Plume Family 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 Polk County Community Foundation Inc 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 Polk County Community Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Polk County Community Foundation Inc 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.