· Private foundation
Jackson & Evelyn Spears 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 $10k4 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE FANNIE AND JOHN HERTZ FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| ST BASIL GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH | $10,000 |
| THE METROPOLITAN OPERA | $10,000 |
| PRINCETON UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| NEW YORK CARES | $10,000 |
| CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL | $10,000 |
| INDIAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| MUSIC IN THE MOUNTAINS | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| PAGOSA SPRINGS MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–21, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +42% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 31 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- ACASIAN CULTURAL COUNCIL INC3× · 2017–2019 · $150k · revenue +5%
- QUQUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY4× · 2018–2021 · $100k · revenue +14%
- NYNEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN5× · 2019–2024 · $98k · revenue +44%
Funded once
- NONATIONAL ORGANIZATION ON DISABILITYone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -33%
- TLTHE LEGAL AID SOCIETYone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +17%
- ACARCHDIOCESAN CATHEDRAL OF THE HOLY TRINITYone grant, 2020 · $10k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York Cares Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pagosa Rotary Community Assistance. 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 46 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 86 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 ASIAN CULTURAL COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FANNIE AND JOHN HERTZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN ↗
- Who funds CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Fordham University ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds INDIAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ORGANIZATION ON DISABILITY ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds Connecticut Challenge Inc DBA Mission Your Mission CT Challenge ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CARES INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds EPIPHANY MAGAZINE INC ↗
- Who funds RUBY M SISSON MEMORIAL LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE WARAMAUG TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds ST LUKES CHAMBER ENSEMBLE INC ↗
- Who funds Music in the Mountains Inc ↗
- Who funds DR MARY FISHER MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STEEP ROCK ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds PAGOSA ROTARY COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE ↗
- Who funds WESTERN HERITAGE EVENT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ARCHULETA COUNTY VICTIM ASSISTANCE PROGRAM INC ↗
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: The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Jewish Communal Fund · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · El Pomar Foundation · Fjc · The New York Community Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Jackson & Evelyn Spears 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.
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Steep Rock Association Inc — 19% of income from government
- Sea Education Association Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Nantucket Conservation Foundation Inc — 4% of income from government
- Friends of the Public Garden Inc — 1% of income from government
- Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Inc — 1% of income from government
- Quinnipiac University — 0% of income from government
- Choate Rosemary Hall Foundation Incorporated — 0% 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 Jackson & Evelyn Spears Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Jackson & Evelyn Spears 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.