· Private foundation
Towering Pines 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $55k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $171k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTER FOR URBAN RENEWAL | $100,000 |
| CARING HOUSE | $71,000 |
| THE EMILY K CENTER | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $10,000 |
| LEADERSHIP EDGE INC | $8,500 |
| THE LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | $8,000 |
| THE FOUNDATION OF HOPE | $7,500 |
| THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| DURHAM TECH FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| DURHAM ARTS COUNCIL | $3,000 |
| DURHAM ACADEMY | $3,000 |
| SAMARITAN HEALTH CENTER INC | $3,000 |
| CENTER FOR CHILD FAMILY HEALTH | $2,500 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ASHBROOK CENTER | $2,500 |
| YMCA CAMP SEA GULL | $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, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 76% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +63% since the first grant, against +52% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 6 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24k 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
CARING HOUSE INC6× · 2019–2025 · $206k · revenue +175%
Leadership Edge Incorporated6× · 2019–2025 · $77k · revenue +63%- UOUniversity of Michigan7× · 2019–2025 · $70k · revenue +140%
Funded once
- DTDURHAM TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGEone grant, 2019 · $25k
- YAYoung America's Foundationone grant, 2021 · $8k · revenue +5%
- TYThe Young Men's Christian Association of the Triangle Area Inc (4598)graduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +52%
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.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
See schedule o.drake's mission is to provide an exceptional learning environment that prepares students for meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. the drake experience is distinguished…
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…
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.
To provide a superior liberal education, to prepare future members of learned professions, to advance the frontiers of knowledge, and to help those who suffer, cure disease, and promote health
Dunwoody college changes lives by building opportunities for graduates to have successful careers, to develop into leaders and entrepreneurs, and to engage in "the better performance of life's duties." quote is from the last will and…
Undergraduate liberal arts education
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.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Greenville college d/b/a greenville university empowers students for lives of character and service through a transforming christ-centered education in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional studies.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
We provide exemplary interdisciplinary programs for a community of scholar-practitioners within a distributed learning model grounded in student-driven inquiry and leading to enhanced knowledge.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Durham Success Summit Inc. 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 39 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 50 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 CARING HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Leadership Edge Incorporated ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE FOREVER ↗
- Who funds CLARE BOOTHE LUCE CENTER FOR CONSERVATIVE WOMEN ↗
- Who funds DURHAM ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Savannah College of Art and DesignInc ↗
- Who funds READERS 2 LEADERS ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN HEALTH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds TRIANGLE RESIDENTIAL OPTIONS FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSERS INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Child and Family Health Inc ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds DAVID HOROWITZ FREEDOM CENTER ↗
- Who funds Partners for Youth Opportunity ↗
- Who funds The Young Men's Christian Association of the Triangle Area Inc (4598) ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STEPUP DURHAM ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE HILL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE DURHAM ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds DURHAM CRISIS RESPONSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY RAPE CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ASHBROOK CENTER ↗
- Who funds LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE FOR AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
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: Triangle Community Foundation Inc · Duke University Health System Inc · Duke University · United Way of the Greater Triangle Inc · Fox Family Foundation Inc · Durham Merchants Association Charitable Foundation · The Forest At Duke Inc · Fm Kirby Foundation Inc · Barnes Family Foundation · Bertsch Family Charitable Foundation Inc · North Carolina Community Foundation · Duke Energy 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 Towering Pines 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 Towering Pines Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Towering Pines 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.