· Private foundation
Hugh E& Marjorie Spetersen Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 41% of HUGH E& MARJORIE SPETERSEN FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $4k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $228k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $521k
- $250k+2 grants · $910k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONTECITO COVENANT CHURCH | $510,000 |
| WESTMONT COLLEGE | $400,000 |
| YOUNG LIFE - CALIFORNIA CENTRAL REGION AF56 | $161,000 |
| HAGGAI INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE | $150,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA RESCUE MISSION | $100,000 |
| FAMILY CARE NETWORK INC | $60,000 |
| PROVIDENCE SCHOOL INC | $50,000 |
| LANGHAM PARTNERSHIP USA | $40,000 |
| HEALING WELL & LIVING FREE FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS INC | $30,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $25,000 |
| DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL | $25,000 |
| CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY VALLEY | $25,000 |
| THROUGH LA ARCADA INVESTMENT CORPORATION K-1 | $23,170 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT WALLS SANTA BARBARA | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 78% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Hugh E& Marjorie Spetersen Foundation Inc’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, 71% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 66% — 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.
32 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- WCWESTMONT COLLEGE8× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +38%
HAGGAI INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED LEADERSHIP TRAINING INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +1%- PSPROVIDENCE SCHOOL8× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +66%
Funded once
- YLYOUNG LIFEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $179k · revenue +59%
- CSCANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY VALLEY VENTURA/SANTA BARBARA INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +41%
- YLYOUNG LIFE - CAPERNAUMone grant, 2022 · $50k
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.
A private institution of higher education, offering both undergraduate and graduate courses to students.
Our institutional mission is to educate and prepare students to be ethical leaders and socially responsible global citizens who incorporate the dominican values of study, reflection, community and service into their lives.
Pacific school of religion prepares a diverse cadre of spiritually rooted leaders with the vision, resilience, and skill to create a world where all can thrive. grounded in the rigorous study and faithful practice of progressive christian…
Point loma nazarene university exists to provide higher education in a vital christian community where minds are engaged and challenged, character is modeled and formed, and service becomes an expression of faith. we aspire to be a…
The mission of hope international university is to empower students through christian higher education to serve the church and impact the world for christ. the university specializes in fields offering significant influence on society…
Bibleproject's mission is to help people experience the bible as a unified story that leads to jesus. this is achieved by creating biblical videos to be regularly released on a newly-created youtube channel. (continued on schedule o.)each…
The mission of southern california seminary (scs) is to bring glory to god by assisting local churches to equip believers of various cultures and languages to live and minister biblically based on the inerrant word of god.
Los angeles pacific university exists to deliver high quality, accessible christ-centered education to learners everywhere.
To proclaim the gospel, grow the messianic jewish community and engage the church concerning israel and the jewish people. this is done through education, evangelism and being a movement leader, all with excellence in order to transform…
San Diego Christian College exists to educate and inspire students through the truth of scripture and the development of competencies that prepare graduates whose purpose is to impact the world.
Scu is a catholic and jesuit institution that makes student learning its central focus, promotes faculty and staff learning in its various forms, and exhibits organizational learning.
Evangel is a comprehensive christian university that is committed to excellence in educating and equipping students to become spirit empowered servants of god who will impact the church and society globally.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Young Life and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 49 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 47 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 WESTMONT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HAGGAI INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED LEADERSHIP TRAINING INC ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CARE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds FOR THE CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY VALLEY VENTURA/SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds LANGHAM PARTNERSHIP USA INC NFP ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA SCHOOL OF SQUASH ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR LEAGUE OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds The Master's Academy International Inc ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSA ↗
- Who funds JUBILEE ECONOMICS MINISTRIES ↗
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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Christian Community Foundation Inc · Servant Foundation · California Community Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · The US Charitable Gift Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management 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 Hugh E& Marjorie Spetersen 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 Hugh E& Marjorie Spetersen Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Hugh E& Marjorie Spetersen 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.