· Private foundation
Rose and Walter Montgomery Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
55% of Rose and Walter Montgomery Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Spartanburg County Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Rose and Walter Montgomery Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $276k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k10 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $93k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $155k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SPARTANBURG DAY SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE ADVENT | $55,000 |
| SPARTANBURG COUNTY FOUNDATION | $37,500 |
| WOFFORD COLLEGE | $30,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF THE PIEDMONT | $15,000 |
| CONVERSE COLLEGE | $10,750 |
| CHAPMAN CULTURAL CENTER | $8,000 |
| CANCER ASSOCIATION OF SPARTANBURG | $7,500 |
| BOYS SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| HAND AND HAND MINISTRY | $1,000 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC | $1,000 |
| ST LUKE'S FREE MED CLINIC | $500 |
| SPARTANBURG PHILHARMONIC | $500 |
| PIEDMONT PHYSIC GARDEN | $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 (FY18–23, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2023, 16 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CSCHRIST SCHOOL INC3× · 2018–2020 · $400k · revenue +141%
WOFFORD COLLEGE7× · 2018–2024 · $190k · revenue +49%
CONVERSE UNIVERSITY6× · 2018–2023 · $63k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- LELAW ENFORCEMENT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $25k
- YYMCAone grant, 2018 · $10k
- ECEPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST JOHNone grant, 2022 · $5k
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.
SMC Delivers an exceptional education that fuses the empowerment of the liberal arts with crucial career skills. Our mission is to equip our students with the knowledge, skills, virtues, and mindset needed to thrive personally, create…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Columbia college provides educational opportunities that develop students' capacity for critical thought and expression, life-long learning, acceptance of personal responsibilty, and commitment to service and social justice.
Spelman college, a historically black college and global leader in the education of women of african descent, is dedicated to the academic excellence of its students.
Southern wesleyan university is a christ-centered, student-focused learning community devoted to transforming lives by challenging students to be dedicated scholars and servant-leaders who impact the world for christ.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
Founded in 1902, barton college is a four-year, private, liberal arts college located in wilson, n.c. the barton experience focuses on academic excellence within a wide range of professional and liberal arts programs leading to…
At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…
Greenville college d/b/a greenville university empowers students for lives of character and service through a transforming christ-centered education in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional studies.
Promoting and protecting the free private and competitive enterprise system through research and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of South Carolina Upstate Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Bailey 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 40 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 48 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 CHRIST SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Spartanburg County Foundation ↗
- Who funds SPARTANBURG DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WOFFORD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE PIEDMONT INC ↗
- Who funds CONVERSE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHAPMAN CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA UPSTATE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE SUMMIT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UPSTATE WARRIOR SOLUTION INC ↗
- Who funds GROUP OF 100 INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA POLICY COUNCIL EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR CHOICE IN EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIP PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds PARDEE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PIEDMONT PHYSIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds ADULT LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE ↗
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: Spartanburg County Foundation · J M Smith Foundation · Arkwright Foundation · Betty James and Walter S Montgomery Jr Foundation · Betty & James K Stone Foundation · Black & Phillips Foundation Inc · Milliken & Company Charitable Foundation · Anna M Black Charitable Foundation · Gibbs Charitable Foundation · Harry H Gibson Family Foundation · Duke Energy Foundation · Alfred Moore 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 Rose and Walter Montgomery 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Rose and Walter Montgomery Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Rose and Walter Montgomery 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.