· Private foundation
The Kooken Family Foundation
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AUGSBURG LUTHERAN CHURCH | $5,000 |
| PIVOT MINISTRY INC | $4,000 |
| THE DWELLING | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| LUTHERAN DISASTER RESPONSE | $3,000 |
| MUSICAL EMPOWERMENT | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| HEART MATH TUTORING | $2,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE SMOKIES | $2,000 |
| CANCER SERVICES | $2,000 |
| SAWTOOTH SCHOOL FOR VISUAL ARTS | $2,000 |
| ARTS FOR LIFE | $2,000 |
| PBS NORTH CAROLINA | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| FORSYTH JAIL & PRISON MINISTRIES | $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 (FY17–25, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 Kooken Family Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 89% of the giving stays in NC; read by stated purpose it is 87% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
13 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 8 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, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
- PEPIEDMONT ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIANCE INC4× · 2017–2024 · $15k · revenue +395%
- CSCANCER SERVICES INC6× · 2017–2025 · $12k · revenue +49%
- PMPIVOT MINISTRY INC2× · 2024–2025 · $6k · revenue +7%
Funded once
- SESTATE EMPLOYEES' CREDIT UNIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $7k · revenue +76%
- TGThe Good Stuffone grant, 2024 · $6k · revenue 0%
NORTH CAROLINA COASTAL LAND TRUSTone grant, 2024 · $6k · revenue -30%
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 be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
The north carolina biotechnology center aids the biotechnology-related efforts of researchers, businesses, state and federal governments, and other agencies primarily through awards of grants and loans related to specific programs and…
Wake county smart start invests in young children, their families, and a connected early childhood system that supports and prepares them for school and life ahead.
To recruit new businesses to winston-salem and forsyth county in order to facilitate growth and economic diversification in the area.
To create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing about themselves, their community, and their world.
As a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, we work to document and analyze fiscal and economic conditions in partnership with community leaders and north carolinians with lived experience of poverty to advance systemic solutions through…
The nccee provides economic and financial education for educators and students throughout north carolina. this mission is accomplished through standards based workshops and a variety of resources for educators, academic competitions for…
The mission of north carolina business leaders for education (dba best nc) is to unite an engaged and informed business perspective to dramatically transform and improve north carolina's education system. our goal is for every student to…
Care share health alliance is a north carolina-based nonprofit organization advancing community health and wellbeing through systems change. guided by the mission of collaborating for health and a vision of communities that are healthy and…
Greater winston-salem inc. is a leading business organization in winston- salem and forsyth county. the organization is focused on establishing winston-salem as a technology-driven economic center. greater winston-salem inc. offers…
Our mission is to improve the economic well-being and quality of life for all north carolinians. we do this by collaborating with state, regional, local, and private-sector partners in new business recruitment, existing employer support,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Women's Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is North Carolina Coastal Land Trust. 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 38 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 — 2% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 73 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 PIEDMONT ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds The Winston-Salem Foundation ↗
- Who funds CANCER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Arts For Life ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds KALEIDEUM ↗
- Who funds STATE EMPLOYEES' CREDIT UNION ↗
- Who funds The Good Stuff ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA COASTAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE CENTERS FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds PIVOT MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAWTOOTH SCHOOL FOR VISUAL ART ↗
- Who funds EXCHANGE CLUB CENTER FOR THE PREVENTION OF CHILD ABUSE OF NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds LOVE OUT LOUD ↗
- Who funds Winston-Salem Mixxer Inc ↗
- Who funds IMPRINTS CARES ↗
- Who funds The Arts Based School ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MUSICAL EMPOWERMENT INC ↗
- Who funds DOORS TO DREAM ↗
- Who funds WINSTON-SALEM STREET SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMOS COTTAGE INCORPORATED ↗
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 Winston-Salem Foundation · Reynolds American Foundation · Triangle Community Foundation Inc · Ta John W and Anna H Hanes Foundation · Duke Energy Foundation · The Cannon Foundation Inc · Foundation for the Carolinas · James G Hanes Memorial Fund · The Lovett Foundation · Forsyth Memorial Hospital Inc · Strickland Family Foundation Cynthia a S Graham · Z Smith Reynolds 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 Kooken Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Kooken Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kooken Family Foundation 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.