· Private foundation
The Cole Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k16 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $35k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OFF THE STREETS | $15,000 |
| MIRACLES IN ACTION | $10,000 |
| SKYLINE CHURCH OF CHRIST | $10,000 |
| EMPOWER 4 LIFE INC | $8,000 |
| ADDICTION CONNECTIONS RESOURCES | $5,000 |
| CHARHOPE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $4,000 |
| UPPER CHESAPEAKE HEALTH FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| AARONS ACRES | $3,000 |
| WATER 4 | $3,000 |
| THE EMPOWERMENT PLAN | $3,000 |
| HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS | $2,000 |
| HELPING UP MISSION | $2,000 |
| FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES | $1,000 |
| DANIEL CARL TORSCH FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $244k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 25% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of The Cole Foundation Inc’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.
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 +50% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 27 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- TCTHE CHAR HOPE FOUNDATION INC7× · 2018–2024 · $81k · revenue +519%
- AAAARON'S ACRES7× · 2018–2024 · $65k · revenue +28%
- EIEMPOWER4LIFEMD Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $45k · revenue +389%
Funded once
- MIMIRACLES IN ACTION INCone grant, 2017 · $18k · revenue -22%
- FCFAMILY & CHILDREN SERVICESone grant, 2017 · $14k
- UEU EMPOWER OF MD (ANGELS OF ADDICTION)one grant, 2017 · $13k
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.
Health care for the homeless works to end homelessness through racially equitable health care, housing and advocacy in partnership with those of us who have experienced it.
Housing unlimited, inc. is a non-profit dedicated to providing affordable, permanent housing opportunities and independent living for adults in mental health recovery.
Pathways to housing pa empowers people with disabilities to improve their housing stability, achieve better health, and reclaim their lives.
Empowering families and individuals experiencing homelessness to build a future filled with dignity, opportunity, and lasting solutions.
Our mission is to break the cycle of addiction and trauma for women, children, and families.
Miracle messages helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security, primarily through family reunification services, a phone buddy program, and basic income pilots.
Lifeworks' mission is to partner with people with disabilities to drive change by increasing opportunity and access in the community.
Lifeworks provides education, jobs and homes for persons with developmental disabilities empowering them to lead meaningful lives within the community. our guiding principles ensure that lifeworks staff and volunteers strive to create and…
To provide rehabilitative housing services and support to help people with psychiatric disabilities reintegrate into the community.the agency provides rehabilitative housing services and staff support as a primary mechanism for achieving…
Samaritan House is committed to fostering personal safety, growth, and self-sufficiency in adults and their children through freedom from domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking and removing their risks of homelessness.
Providing innovative and life-enriching services for children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities.
We are making maryland healthier by connecting residents to insurance and care, educating the community about healthier living, and advocating a more equitable health care system.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cradles to Crayons Inc and the most unlike its peers is Off the Streets Middletown Inc. 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 21 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
45 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 45 of the 84 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 OFF THE STREETS MIDDLETOWN INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHAR HOPE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AARON'S ACRES ↗
- Who funds ADDICTION CONNECTIONS RESOURCE INC ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER4LIFEMD Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds HELPING UP MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR SURVIVOR CARE INC ↗
- Who funds Upper Chesapeake Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds OUR HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds TRICKLE UP PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds MIRACLES IN ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds LOVE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE EMPOWERMENT PLAN ↗
- Who funds WATER4 INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds KYLEE'S DANCING ANGELS INC ↗
- Who funds OLIVIA'S HOUSE - A GRIEF AND LOSS CENTER FOR CHILDREN ↗
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 Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation Inc · The Dresher Foundation Inc · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · Kleins Shoprite of Maryland Charitable Fund Inc · The United Way of Central Maryland Inc · Nora Roberts Foundation · Society Italian-American Business · Edward St John Foundation Inc · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · The Abell Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Enterprise Holdings 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 The Cole 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The Maryland School for the Blind — 47% of income from government
- Harford Family House Inc — 14% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% of income from government
- Helping Up Mission Inc — 6% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Center for Hope Inc — 1% 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 The Cole Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Cole 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.