· Private foundation
Sears Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHURCH ON MORGAN | $85,000 |
| THE GREEN CHAIR PROJECT | $45,000 |
| CASA | $25,000 |
| STEPUP MINISTRY | $15,000 |
| SHIP COMMUNITY OUTREACH | $10,000 |
| GIFT OF LIFE INTERNATIONAL | $10,000 |
| SAFECHILD | $5,000 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $3,000 |
| WOMEN THAT CARE INC | $3,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $161k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +54% since the first grant, against -6% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 3 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $98k 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
- TGTHE GREEN CHAIR PROJECT5× · 2018–2025 · $108k · revenue +91%
A PLACE AT THE TABLE5× · 2018–2024 · $49k · revenue +126%- GOGIFT OF LIFE INTERNATIONAL INC4× · 2021–2025 · $40k · revenue +113%
Funded once
- BBLOOMHEREone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue -50%
- TQTHE QUIET PLACE NC INCone grant, 2021 · $13k · revenue -20%
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIESone grant, 2018 · $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.
Southlight healthcare provides access to high-quality mental health and substance use treatment, fostering a resilient community by supporting individuals in their recovery.
On the rise's work begins with individuals experiencing homelessness and continues if and when they secure housing. from our origin as a women's organization, our programs have evolved toward inclusion of those historically and…
Our mission is to provide comprehensive life-sustaining and life-rebuilding services that promote healing from substance use disorder, mental health disorders, and homelessness.
Covenant house georgia provides shelters, protects and advocates on behalf of homeless, trafficked, runaway and sexually exploited youth.
To provide responsive, person-centered services to improve the quality of life of individuals with disabilities.
Safe harbour provides a continuum of housing and supportive services for homeless and nearly homeless individuals and families in our communities.
Roof above, inc. is an interfaith, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to unite the community to end homelessness, one life at a time. we do so by providing an array of homeless services and housing services in the charlotte metro…
The Abuse Prevention Council provides emergency, advocacy, counseling, education and specialized services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and homeless individuals and families.
S.a.f.e. house is a community based non-profit organization committed to stop abuse in the family environment by providing a comprehensive approach to end domestic violence that includes crisis intervention, safe shelter, counseling,…
The mission of the st. vincent de paul society of san francisco (svdp-sf) is to offer hope and service on a direct person-to-person basis, working to break the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.
Hope services hawaii provides housing-focused interventions to end homelessness through a continuum of services, including homeless prevention and diversion, mobile outreach, medical respite, street medicine, in- shelter medical attention,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Plm Families Together Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Quiet Place Nc Inc. 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 34 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 40 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 CASA ↗
- Who funds THE GREEN CHAIR PROJECT ↗
- Who funds A PLACE AT THE TABLE ↗
- Who funds GIFT OF LIFE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds STEPUP MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds BLOOMHERE ↗
- Who funds OAK CITY CARES INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Aspire Inc ↗
- Who funds SAFECHILD ↗
- Who funds THE QUIET PLACE NC INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHIP OUTREACH AND COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TOGETHER WE CAN INC ↗
- Who funds PLM FAMILIES TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds THE RALEIGH RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS CLUB OF WAKE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Eden Village of Wilmington ↗
- Who funds MANNA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds BELOVED ASHEVILLE ↗
- Who funds THE FAMILY VIOLENCE PREVENTION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Churches Outreach Network ↗
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: North Carolina Community Foundation · Triangle Community Foundation Inc · W Trent Ragland Jr Foundation · United Way of the Greater Triangle Inc · Duke Energy Foundation · Bell Schaefer Family Foundation · Truist Foundation Inc · Bell Cook Family Foundation · A E Finley Foundation Inc · Bell Koonce Burnette Foundation · The Leon Levine Foundation · Realtor Foundation of Wake County
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 Sears Family 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
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Find your warmest path to Sears Family 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.