· Private foundation
The Griffin Endowment
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 $10k17 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $144k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNC HEATLTH FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $22,000 |
| GREENSBORO SCIENCE CENTER | $21,518 |
| GREENSBORO DAY SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| SOCIETY OF THE FOUR ARTS | $10,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF PALM BEACH | $10,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER GREENSBORO | $10,000 |
| PRESERVATION FOUNDATION OF PALM BEACH | $10,000 |
| THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI | $6,000 |
| THE PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE | $6,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FLORIDA PHILANTHROPHY INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| SALEM COLLEGE | $2,000 |
| GREENSBORO SYMPHONY | $2,000 |
| FLAGLER MUSEUM | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 84% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +25% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 4 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
UNC HEALTH FOUNDATION INC8× · 2018–2025 · $320k · revenue +69%- WFWOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL8× · 2018–2025 · $285k · revenue +25%
- GIGreensboro Independent School Corp7× · 2019–2025 · $63k · revenue +75%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF GRACE CHURCH SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $3k
- YYWCAone grant, 2020 · $3k
- CTCOMMUNITY THEATRE OF GREENSBORO INCone grant, 2020 · $1k · revenue -5%
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.
Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
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…
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.
Golden gate university prepares individuals to lead and serve by providing high quality, practice-based educational programs in law, taxation, business and related professions - as a nonprofit institution - in an innovative and challenging…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The mission of the gibbes museum of art is to enhance lives through art by engaging people of every background and experience with art and artists of enduring quality; collect and preserve the art that touches charleston; and provide…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Theatre of Greensboro Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mote Marine Laboratory 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 56 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% 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 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.
28 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. 28 of the 53 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 UNC HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Greensboro Independent School Corp ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER GREENSBORO INC ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds MOTE MARINE LABORATORY INC ↗
- Who funds The Society of the Four Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF SARASOTA AND DESOTO COUNTIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURAL SCIENCE CENTER OF GREENSBORO INC DBA GREENSBORO SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds SALEM ACADEMY AND COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHARLOTTE INC ↗
- Who funds Sarasota Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach Inc ↗
- Who funds PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds TRIAD STAGE INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SARASOTA CO INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI ↗
- Who funds THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER GREENSBORO INC ↗
- Who funds GREENSBORO CHILDREN'S MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds GREENSBORO BEAUTIFUL INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP ↗
- Who funds WOMEN IN THE WINDOW INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE SOCIETY OF ST ANDREW INC ↗
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: Griffin Family Foundation · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · The Edward M Armfield Sr Foundation I · The Cemala Foundation Inc · The Hummel Family Fund Inc · Smith Richardson Foundation Inc · The Anonymous Fund · Well-Spring Retirement Community Inc · Tannenbaum-Sternberger Foundation Inc · Hillsdale Fund · Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro 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 Griffin Endowment 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 Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Everglades Club 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 The Griffin Endowment?
Find your warmest path to The Griffin Endowment 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.