· Private foundation
Sowing Circle
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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $98k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $200k
- $250k+1 grant · $267k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Blue Letter Bible | $267,000 |
| Reverence Bible Church | $200,449 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Enduring Word | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| Understand the Times | $15,960 |
| Safe Harbor International | $12,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa | $7,200 |
| U-Turn for Christ | $7,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| The Life Network | $6,000 |
| Pastoral Training of Asia | $5,000 |
| Wycliff Bible Translators | $4,500 |
| Young Life Abi Hoc | $4,500 |
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 (FY23–24, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +31% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 6 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47k 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
- BLBLUE LETTER BIBLE8× · 2017–2024 · $4.9M · revenue +212% · 48% of their budget
- R2RUN 2 RESCUE4× · 2019–2022 · $400k · revenue +31% · 25% of their budget
- EWEnduring Word8× · 2017–2024 · $200k · revenue +822%
Funded once
- CFCatalyst for Harmonygraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +27%
- FRFar Reaching Ministriesone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +4%
- TLTraining Leaders Internationalone grant, 2022 · $6k · revenue +7%
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.
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
Reaching and teaching pastors in the majority world.
Bible Translation and acts of Christian Services
To Identify, Affirm, Train, and Mobilize Ephesians 4 evangelists to equip the church for evangelism.
Connecting biblical soul care to missions through the local church.
Christian Mission for the United Nations Community is a ministry aimed at leading the head of every nation and other top leaders to faith in Jesus Christ and helping them to walk in dependence upon God as they discharge the…
Uncharted ministries informs, inspires and challenges the christian church to serve the people of the middle east and in uncharted lands.
Global City Mission Initiative is dedicated to cross-cultural evanglism, disciplemaking, church planting among diverse diaspora populations in strategic cities reaching out evangelistically to start multiply churches, training believers to…
The organization exists to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ while providing support and serving the poor through benevolent assistance, medical services, education, orphan care, church planting, etc.
Ambassadors for Christ International - USA is a fellowship of gospel preachers and teachers whose mission is to preach Christ, edify the Church, and to glorify God and serve as a catalyst for revival, evangelism, and training of Christians…
i58 Global is a Christian ministry dedicated to recruiting, sending and organizing relief workers to provide aid and share hope to refugees in various European countries.
Crossing Cultures International, Inc. exists to glorify God by equipping Christ followers globally with comprehensive training for effective ministry.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Miracle Hill Ministries Inc and the most unlike its peers is International Fellowship of Christians & Jews Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 20 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) — 5% 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.
14 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. 14 of the 35 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 BLUE LETTER BIBLE ↗
- Who funds RUN 2 RESCUE ↗
- Who funds Enduring Word ↗
- Who funds UNDERSTAND THE TIMES INC ↗
- Who funds Safe Harbor International Relief ↗
- Who funds Catalyst for Harmony ↗
- Who funds Far Reaching Ministries ↗
- Who funds MIRACLE HILL MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIANS & JEWS INC ↗
- Who funds PIEDMONT WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds Training Leaders International ↗
- Who funds MIO Frontiers ↗
- Who funds GO Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds Open Air Campaigners US 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: Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Sowing Circle 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 Sowing Circle?
Find your warmest path to Sowing Circle 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.