· Private foundation
The Gambrell Foundation
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $120k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.7M
- $250k+7 grants · $3.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR BOYS AND MEN | $800,000 |
| LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION | $650,000 |
| HOPELAB FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS | $450,000 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG INC | $399,706 |
| BOARD OF REGENTS - UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA | $350,000 |
| LAKEVIEW NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE | $303,680 |
| URBANPROMISE CHARLOTTE | $230,000 |
| THE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES | $217,366 |
| UNC CHARLOTTE FOUNDATION | $166,667 |
| CHARLOTTE URBAN INSTITUTE - UNC CHARLOTTE | $128,000 |
| CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $125,000 |
| THE CHRISTIAN MISSION | $125,000 |
| DILWORTH CENTER FOR CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY | $120,000 |
| UNITED WAY CENTRAL CAROLINAS INC | $100,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
38 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 7 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, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.0M 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
- CPCENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC4× · 2020–2023 · $1.5M · revenue +43%
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER CHARLOTTE3× · 2020–2022 · $950k · revenue +12%
- LNLakewood Neighborhood Alliance Inc DBA as Lakeview Neighborhood Alliance3× · 2022–2024 · $911k · revenue +251% · 63% of their budget
Funded once
- TBTHE BROOKINGS INSTITUTIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $622k · revenue +46%
- RCRALLY CHARLOTTEone grant, 2022 · $200k · revenue -95% · 59% of their budget
- ASARTS & SCIENCE COUNCIL CHARLOTTE/MECKLENBURG INCone grant, 2021 · $151k · revenue -95%
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.
To unite the Church to transform the city through the power of the Gospel.
The mission of The Charlotte Center is to help our community flourish. We accomplish our mission by bringing people together to explore community life together through the lens of the humanities and civic imagination.
Charlotte center city partners (cccp) boldly envisions and activates strategies and actions that will assure charlotte center city is a welcoming and equitable, economically vibrant, culturally rich and beloved place for all.
Charlotte Is Creative develops programs and initiatives designed to break the Charlotte mold and remake it with creativity into a city that draws people in, excites them, and inspires them to invest their financial, social and creative…
Collaborate to promote and advance the charlotte region, creating opportunity, economic growth and prosperity for all.
Charlotte works serves job-seekers and businesses by providing resources to develop a skilled workforce that meets employer needs. the organization offers job-search workshops, individual coaching, networking opportunities, and training…
The market at 7th street is a mission-based nonprofit that combines culinary and retail innovation, economic opportunity, and a sense of belonging. the market: 1) incubates new food and retail businesses, 2) supports economic mobility…
Charlotte pride creates programs and activites to enrich, empower, strengthen and make visable the unique lives and experiences of lgbtq people in charlotte.
Public/private collaborative to plant trees, raise awareness of the canopy, and educate about tree care.
The mission of Community Building Initiative (CBI) is to give people and organizations the knowledge, skills and courage to fight bias, remove barriers to opportunity and build a more equitable and just CharlotteMecklenburg. CBI envisions…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Foundation for the Carolinas and the most unlike its peers is Hopelab Foundation 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 33 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
56 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. 56 of the 69 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 Queens University of Charlotte ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Young Womens Christian Association of the Central Carolinas Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Communities In Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Inc ↗
- Who funds Charmeck Family Justice Center Inc co Safe Alliance ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR BOYS AND MEN ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER CHARLOTTE ↗
- Who funds Lakewood Neighborhood Alliance Inc DBA as Lakeview Neighborhood Alliance ↗
- Who funds CMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UrbanPromise Charlotte ↗
- Who funds Camp Blue Skies Foundation ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHARLOTTE INC ↗
- Who funds Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy Inc ↗
- Who funds Charlotte Museum of History ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds Hopelab Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds FLORENCE CRITTENTON INC ↗
- Who funds Dilworth Center for Chemical Dependency ↗
- Who funds International House of Metrolina Inc ↗
- Who funds Henderson County & Thermal Belt Habitat for Humanity ↗
- Who funds CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Mooresville Area Christian Mission Inc ↗
- Who funds CLASSROOM CENTRAL INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD SOUTH ATLANTIC INC ↗
- Who funds Young Black Leadership Alliance ↗
- Who funds THE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds RALLY CHARLOTTE ↗
- Who funds ATRIUM HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE ↗
- Who funds ARTS & SCIENCE COUNCIL CHARLOTTE/MECKLENBURG INC ↗
- Who funds The Steve Smith Family Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Center for Community Transitions ↗
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: Foundation for the Carolinas · The Leon Levine Foundation · United Way of Greater Charlotte Inc · The Presbyterian Hospital · Duke Energy Foundation · Merancas Foundation Inc · Albemarle Foundation · Equitable Foundation Inc · The Cannon Foundation Inc · Truist Foundation Inc · The Winston-Salem Foundation · The Dickson Foundation 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 Gambrell 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.