CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION

What Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation does

The organization over time

Each line starts at 100 in 2020, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2020, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2024 to 2025, from $59M to $31M (−47%).

How it's funded, over time

Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 6 reported years ran a deficit.

Leadership and staff

The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.

Who funds it, year by year

2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 7 funders to 31 funders, grant income rose $28k → $2.6M.

12 of 55 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 13% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.

Left out of every figure on this page: $3.4M from 2 payers (the payer shares this organization's board, largest Foundation for the Carolinas). These are real filings, and they are not money CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION raised.

From the IRS filings of CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 55 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How concentrated its funding is

CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 25% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.

Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 36% · 2018 23% · 2019 96% · 2020 67% · 2021 42% · 2022 26% · 2023 39% — growing more concentrated.

“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How long its funders stay

65% of CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 65% give in more than one year at all.

Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.

Where its funders are

CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY FOUNDATION draws 51% of its grant income from funders outside North Carolina, across 12 states in all.

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $2.3M arriving through sponsors registered in 11 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.