· Private foundation
Thomas R & Elizabeth E McLean Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $258k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $510k
- $250k+2 grants · $708k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| METHODIST UNIVERSITY | $458,001 |
| FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC | $250,000 |
| NC CIVIL WAR CENTER | $200,000 |
| FTCC FOUNDATION | $175,400 |
| CAPE FEAR BOTANICAL GARDEN | $70,001 |
| FAYETTEVILLE AREA OPERATION INASMUCH | $65,000 |
| COMMUNITY CONCERTS OF FAYETTEVILLE NC | $40,000 |
| CUMBERLAND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| CONNECTIONS OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY | $30,000 |
| CAPE FEAR REGIONAL THEATRE | $25,001 |
| CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER | $21,000 |
| FAYETTEVILLE URBAN MINISTRY INC | $20,000 |
| MYROVER-REESE FELLOWSHIP HOMES INC | $20,000 |
| FAYETTEVILLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $17,000 |
| FAYETTEVILLE FAMILY LIFE CENTER | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–22, $865k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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 +11% since the first grant, against -7% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 2 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- MUMETHODIST UNIVERSITY INC4× · 2020–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +27%
- AAAIRBORNE AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS MUSEUM FOUNDATION4× · 2020–2023 · $700k · revenue +9%
- CFCAPE FEAR BOTANICAL GARDEN5× · 2020–2025 · $570k · revenue +35%
Funded once
- APACTION PATHWAYS INCone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue -7%
- LSLAFAYETTE SOCIETY INCone grant, 2021 · $10k
- BGBOYS & GIRLS HOME NCone grant, 2023 · $4k
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.
The arts council connects our communities, embraces diversity, promotes individual creativity, advances economic development, and fosters lifelong learning through the arts.
To promote the arts in caldwell county, nc
Carolina Family Health Centers, Inc. provides accessible and affordable health care with excellence...where patients come FIRST
The mission is to promote the arts in the fayetteville/ cumberland county area of nc, by providing facilities and equipment for beginning artists, and by providing a marketplace for sales.
To build a stronger fayette county by inspiring charitable giving, supporting nonprofits, and nurturing positive community impact.
To enrich and connect individuals in the greater raleigh community through intimate and exceptional chamber music experiences. we are committed to presenting world class artists performing music of the highest caliber, providing…
Recruit and train and license foster parents to receive foster children from county government agencies.
Inspiring philanthropy and strengthening our region through innovative community initiatives and quality services to donors and constituents.
To promote both small business and personal growth, productiveness and well being through loans, peer counseling, education, information, and other advocacy programs throughout cumberland county, north carolina.
To receive and hold the endowment of the north carolina symphony society, inc. (the "society"), solicit additions to the endowment, safeguard assets, and expend funds for the exclusive use and benefit of the society.
Carolina Youth Symphony provides professional training to young students and gives these students the opportunity to perform several public concerts throughout the year.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra Inc and the most unlike its peers is Heritage Square Historical Society of North Carolina 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 41 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 30% 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 20% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 34 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 METHODIST UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds CAPE FEAR VALLEY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AIRBORNE AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPE FEAR BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPE FEAR REGIONAL THEATRE AT FAYETTEVILLE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CUMBERLAND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE AREA OPERATION INASMUCH ↗
- Who funds COOL SPRING DOWNTOWN DISTRICT INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CONCERTS OF FAYETTEVILLE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE SQUARE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE URBAN MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTVILLE AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds BETTER HEALTH OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP CORRAL ↗
- Who funds Vision Resource Center ↗
- Who funds MYROVER-REESE FELLOWSHIP HOMES INC ↗
- Who funds FAYETTEVILLE FAMILY LIFE CENTER IN ↗
- Who funds CUMBERLAND CHORAL ARTS ↗
- Who funds ACTION PATHWAYS INC ↗
- Who funds SANDHILLS FAMILY HERITAGE ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Cumberland Community Foundation Inc · Riddle Family Foundation · The Cannon Foundation Inc · Florence Rogers Charitable Trust · Youth Growth Stock Trust · Carolyn Riddle Armstrong Family Foundation · Sharlene R Williams Family Foundation · Jp Riddle Charitable Foundation Inc · Foundation for the Carolinas · Anonymous Trust U/A Dated 2-4-2008 · Duke Energy Foundation · David & Elisabeth Nimocks 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 Thomas R & Elizabeth E McLean 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Thomas R & Elizabeth E McLean Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Thomas R & Elizabeth E McLean Foundation Inc 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.