· Private foundation
The Carson 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $173k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILKES CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL | $55,375 |
| Individual grant recipient | $43,600 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,500 |
| WILKES COUNTY SCHOOLS | $32,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $26,495 |
| CENTRAL WILKES MIDDLE SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| WILKES COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP FOR CHILDREN | $10,000 |
| DENTON PUBLIC LIBRARY | $9,915 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,000 |
| NC COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| SOUTH DAVIDSON HIGH SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| WILKES COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT | $4,000 |
| WILKESBORO UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $3,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–17, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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.
29 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- WCWILKES COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP FOR CHILDREN4× · 2021–2025 · $72k · revenue +175%
- SKSAMARITAN KITCHEN OF WILKES6× · 2017–2022 · $34k · revenue +35%
- HDHAPPY DOG RANCH FOUNDATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $11k · revenue +416%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILLone grant, 2019 · $25k
- WCWILKES CENTRAL CHOIRone grant, 2024 · $20k
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +46%
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.
Promote humane care and treatment for all animals
Choosing Life over Abortion
Pet food assistance- we distribute free pet food and contraception to animals whose owners were experiencing financial hardships.
Food distribution to the needy
The mission of WNC Lighthouse Inc is Changing lives, by being a light for Christ our Lord. Our vision is To be fully devoted to Jesus Christ, by opening our arms and providing Christian services to the underseved children, adults and…
To promote the self-reliance of women by assessing needs, providing services, and acting as a gateway to community resources; to seek solutions for unmet needs by providing strategic leadership through collaboration and partnerships within…
Located in raleigh, nc, the spca of wake county works in over half the state of north carolina through collaborative partnerships that save pets and help people. significant activities include: decreasing the number of animals entering…
We provide compassionate support mentoring and life training resources to women men and families facing planned or unplanned pregnancies We give them training in all walks of life from pregnancy to parenting helping them to make accurate…
Provide food, shelter, rehabilitation and christian ministry to the poor and homeless
Our main program is providing vet care to animals dropped at or rescued from the local animal shelter. This is the only service we provide and where our expenses go. We spay/neuter animals adopted from the shelter and provide vet care to…
To fight hunger and poverty in northeastern north carolina.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wilkes Community Partnership for Children and the most unlike its peers is Wilkes Playmakers 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 31 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
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 54 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 WILKES COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN KITCHEN OF WILKES ↗
- Who funds OPERATION RESOLUTE INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds HAPPY DOG RANCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HAND IN HAND MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds WILKES ART GALLERY INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Wilkes Pregnancy Care Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BEAGLE FREEDOM PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Bounty & Soul ↗
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 Leonard G Herring Family Foundation · The Stone Foundation · United Way of Wilkes County Inc · The Health Foundation Inc · The Winston-Salem Foundation · Wilkes Medical Center Foundation · The Cannon Foundation Inc · North Carolina Community Foundation · Network for Good · American Endowment Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 The Carson 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.
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.