· Public charity
The South Carolina Bar Foundation Inc
To fund the advancement of justice by improving civil legal services, law- related education, administration of justice, and legal services for community redevelopment and foreclosure prevention.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k19 grants · $407k
- $50k–250k20 grants · $1.9M
- $250k+1 grant · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SC LEGAL SERVICES | $1,496,890 |
| SC BAR LAW RELATED EDUCATION | $201,108 |
| SC ACCESS TO JUSTICE COMMISSION | $164,961 |
| LOWCOUNTRY LEGAL VOLUNTEERS | $131,000 |
| ONE80 PLACE | $125,018 |
| SC COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC | $120,750 |
| EQUAL JUSTICE WORKS | $112,000 |
| PROJECT REST | $108,737 |
| CENTER FOR HEIRS PROPERTY | $100,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OFFICE OF | $96,548 |
| CHARLESTON PRO BONO LEGAL SERVICES | $90,617 |
| SC VICTIM ASSISTANCE NETWORK INC | $80,887 |
| CHARLESTON LEGAL ACCESS | $78,000 |
| SC CENTER FOR FATHERS AND FAMILIES | $75,000 |
| SC ENVIRONMENTAL LAW PROJECT | $60,300 |
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, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 83% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +53% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 5 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $327k 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
- SCSouth Carolina Legal Services9× · 2017–2025 · $12M · revenue +30%
- SCSOUTH CAROLINA BAR9× · 2017–2025 · $3.1M · revenue +19%
- CFCenter for Heirs' Property Preservation9× · 2017–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +577%
Funded once
- GBGREENVILLE BAR PRO BONO FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $18k
- CDCHARLESTON DIGITAL MEDIA INITIATIVE INCone grant, 2019 · $15k
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 expand access to legal representation and rights in South Carolina.
The Southern Center for Human Rights is working for equality, dignity, and justice for people impacted by the criminal legal system in the Deep South. SCHR fights for a world free from mass incarceration, the death penalty, the…
Provides immigration legal services to persons who are otherwise financially incapable of obtaining such services.
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
The mission of scaj is to protect the rights of the individual; to seek justice through open and fair courtrooms; to resist unjust laws; to support policies that hold wrongdoers accountable; to strengthen the justice system through…
The legal aid justice center partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty.
The south carolina policy council was founded in 1986 as an independent, private, non-partisan research organization to promote the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty and responsibility in the state…
Enhancing the quality of life for all south carolinians, achieving global competiteveness and ultimately increasing prosperity for sc citizens.
South jersey legal services, inc. is a non-profit organization created to provide quality legal representation and advocacy to low-income individuals in atlantic, burlington, camden, cape may, cumberland, gloucester, monmouth, ocean and…
Empowering south carolina communities and children's advocacy centers to deliver a best practice response to child abuse
To achieve equal justice for the poor and disadvantaged through community based legal advocacy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is South Carolina Legal Services and the most unlike its peers is Midlands Mediation Center. 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 37 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 43 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 South Carolina Legal Services ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA BAR ↗
- Who funds Center for Heirs' Property Preservation ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Research Foundation ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ASSAULT ↗
- Who funds One-Eighty Place ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY LEGAL VOLUNTEERS ↗
- Who funds PRO BONO LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds PALMETTO PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA CENTER FOR FATHERS AND FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of South Carolina ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA APPLESEED LEGAL JUSTICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA ENVIRONMENTAL LAW PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA VICTIM ASSISTANCE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds UPSTATE MEDIATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds SISTERCARE INC ↗
- Who funds TRIDENT URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF GREENVILLE ↗
- Who funds PROJECT REST ↗
- Who funds Midlands Housing Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE WORKS ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL JUDICIAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SERVE AND CONNECT ↗
- Who funds TURN90 ↗
- Who funds Richland County Court Appointed Special Advocates ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY RIGHTS SOUTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds TIME SERVED ↗
- Who funds Midlands Mediation Center ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA CENTER ON ACTUAL INNOCENCE ↗
- Who funds Rainy Day Fund ↗
- Who funds JUSTICE 360 ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Coastal Conservation League Inc ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON DIGITAL MEDIA INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINIANS FOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY ↗
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: Central Carolina Community Foundation · Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Post and Courier Foundation · Community Foundation of the Lowcountry · The Sunshine Foundation Inc · Frances P Bunnelle Foundation Coastal Community Foundation of Sc · Truist Foundation Inc · The Nord Family Foundation · Duke Energy Foundation · Charleston County Bar Association
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 South Carolina Bar 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 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.