· Private foundation
Lightspark 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $170k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $149k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| IMPACT GUILD | $99,018 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $31,000 |
| CHICANOS POR LA CAUSA INC | $25,000 |
| UTAH DONOR COLLABORATIVE | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| SALT LAKE CITY CORP YOUTHCITY | $13,500 |
| IMMIGRANT LEGAL SERVICES | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $10,000 |
| SOUNDS SUPPORT FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| URBAN RURAL ACTION | $10,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $10,000 |
| WOMEN OF THE WORLD | $10,000 |
| UTAH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM PROJECT | $10,000 |
| EQUALITY UTAH | $6,500 |
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 (FY23–25, $73k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 41% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
34 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 10 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $86k 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
- IGIMPACT GUILD INC3× · 2023–2025 · $149k · revenue +866% · 25% of their budget
- WSWASTELESS SOLUTIONS INC3× · 2023–2025 · $30k · revenue +52%
- TOThe Other Side Academy2× · 2023–2025 · $30k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $128k
- DDIVERSIONone grant, 2021 · $92k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $61k
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.
Utah Humanities collaborates with libraries, museums, historical societies, schools, colleges, and cultural and civic groups; provides capacity-building opportunities for volunteers and professionals in the cultural sector; presents…
Utah Leads set out to understand what makes our information ecosystem in Utah unique, who is influencing policy formation in Utah, how that influence works in practice through multiple channels and across channels, and what policy…
Our mission is to engage with communities and catalyze private, public, and philanthropic partnerships to remedy opportunity gaps in economic opportunity, education, health, and housing in Utah.
To advance sustainable health care solutions for underserved utahns through better access, education, and public policy.
Utah foundation's mission is to produce objective, thorough and well- reasoned research and analysis that promotes the effective use of public resources, a thriving economy, a well-prepared workforce and a high quality of life for utahns.…
To help people clear their criminal records and access opportunities. we will do this by: 1) spreading the word about utah's clean slate law to individuals with records, so they are aware of the law and its positive impact on their lives;…
Envision Utah is a nonpartisan public-private partnership that engages people to create and sustain communities that are beautiful, prosperous, healthy, and neighborly for current and future residents.
Utah Donor Collaborative Foundation educates and empowers diverse communities by supporting innovative programs that foster civic participation and voter access. We strive to inspire all voters, including the local youth population, rural…
Utahns for a Responsive Government, DBA Better Boundaries mission is to create an independent redistricting process that utilizes voter-centric standards. We use education, advocacy, policy, and the justice system to reach our goal of…
Utah Dispute Resolution exists to provide residents of Utah with quality mediation services, information and training in dispute resolution, and the means to successfully, informally and cooperatively resolve disputes.
World trade center utah accelerates growth for utah companies through our global networks, programs, and services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Utah Children and the most unlike its peers is Immigrant Legal Services. 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 24 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 91 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 IMPACT GUILD INC ↗
- Who funds WASTELESS SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds The Other Side Academy ↗
- Who funds Women of the World ↗
- Who funds FOCUS FOR DEMOCRACY FUND ↗
- Who funds CHICANOS POR LA CAUSA INC CPLC ↗
- Who funds THE CREATIVE COALITION ↗
- Who funds UTAH CLEAN ENERGY ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds O2 UTAH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Veterans for All Voters ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD HOME ↗
- Who funds Immigrant Legal Services ↗
- Who funds UTAH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Utah Donor Collaborative ↗
- Who funds Salt Lake Academy of Music ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds Young Women's Christian Association of Utah ↗
- Who funds Wasatch Homeless Health Care ↗
- Who funds EQUALITY UTAH ↗
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: Sorenson Legacy Foundation · The Community Foundation of Utah · George S and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation · McCarthey Family Foundation · Larry H Miller and Gail Miller Family Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Hemingway Foundation · Lawrence & Janet Dee Foundation · Kanter Family Foundation · Willard L Eccles Charitable Foundation · Intermountain Community Care Foundation Inc · David Kelby Johnson Memorial 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 Lightspark 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.
- Columbus House Inc — 100% 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 Lightspark Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Lightspark 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.