· Private foundation
The Ward Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $70k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $130k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HILTON HEAD ISLAND DEEP WELL PROJECT | $30,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA FOUNDATION INC | $25,000 |
| KIPP METRO ATLANTA | $20,000 |
| HONDURAS AGALTA VALLEY EDUCATION FOUNDATION (HAVE) | $15,000 |
| ATRIUM HEALTH WAKE FOREST BAPTIST | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN'S CENTER INC | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTHEAST FLORIDA | $10,000 |
| VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE (VIM) CLINIC | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE LOWCOUNTRY | $8,000 |
| MEMORY MATTERS | $7,500 |
| DEEP WELL PROJECT HILTON HEAD | $7,000 |
| TOM COUGHLIN JAY FUND FOUNDATION INC | $5,000 |
| CHILDREN'S CANCER PARTNERS OF THE CAROLINAS INC | $5,000 |
| CARTER CENTER | $5,000 |
| LOW COUNTRY LEGAL VOLUNTEERS | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 44% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 12% of The Ward 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, 49% of the giving stays in SC; read by stated purpose it is 44% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +18% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $65k 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
- TVTHE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE CLINIC7× · 2019–2025 · $94k · revenue +59%
- BABoys and Girls Club of Northeast Florida Inc7× · 2019–2025 · $55k · revenue +177%
- MMMEMORY MATTERS7× · 2019–2025 · $50k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF HILTON HEAD ISLANDone grant, 2023 · $10k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $10k
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue 0%
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.
Florida community health centers, inc. (fchc) is a federally qualified health center serving medically needy populations in south florida, with an emphasis on serving rural and farm worker communities.
Empowering south carolina communities and children's advocacy centers to deliver a best practice response to child abuse
Facilitate networking among hospitals
Carolina Family Health Centers, Inc. provides accessible and affordable health care with excellence...where patients come FIRST
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
To strengthen families, organizations, and communities to prevent child abuse and neglect.
To make kids better today and healthier tomorrow.
The center for children & youth justice was founded in 2006 with one mission: reform the child welfare and juvenile justice systems to improve the lives of generations of children and youth in washington state. our focus is large-scale,…
The caswell county partnership for children unites the community to provide families with resources and services to enable all children to reach their fullest potential.
Mobilizing the power of our community to break the cycle of poverty.
Conway hospital community services provides outpatient health care services to horry county and the surrounding community in conjunction with conway hospital, inc., a non-profit acute care hospital system.
The mission of heart of florida united way is to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of our communities. this is accomplished by standing up for the health, education, and financial stability of every person in central florida.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of the Lowcountry and the most unlike its peers is Dbwpc Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
22 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. 22 of the 36 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 THE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Community Foundation of the Lowcountry ↗
- Who funds Boys and Girls Club of Northeast Florida Inc ↗
- Who funds MEMORY MATTERS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE LOWCOUNTRY ↗
- Who funds THE TOM COUGHLIN JAY FUND FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARTSBRIDGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE LOWCOUNTRY INC ↗
- Who funds HILTON HEAD ISLAND DEEP WELL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds KIPP JACKSONVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY LEGAL VOLUNTEERS ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR NORTHEAST FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds Museum of Science and History of Jacksonville Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CANCER PARTNERS OF THE CAROLINAS INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds MaliVai Washington Kids Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds DBWPC INC ↗
- Who funds PACE CENTER FOR GIRLSINC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HOSPICE OF NORTHEAST FLORIDA ↗
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: Community Foundation of the Lowcountry · Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Inc · Wexford Foundation · Palmetto Electric Trust · The Berkeley Hall Charitable Foundation · The Bargain Box · Heritage Classic Foundation · Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida Inc · Pga Tour Inc · Ekedahl 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 Ward 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Dbwpc Inc — 10% of income from government
- Kipp Jacksonville Inc — 7% of income from government
- Pace Center for Girlsinc — 2% 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 Ward Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ward 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.