· Private foundation
Spicola Family Foundation
Its FY2022 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Spicola Family Foundation’s FY2022 grant dollars went to Communitygiving, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2022 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Spicola Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 16 organizations, $21k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTH COUNTRY FOOD ALLIANCE | $2,000 |
| NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE | $2,000 |
| MARTHA'S VILLAGE AND KITCHEN | $1,750 |
| CASA OF ORANGE COUNTY | $1,750 |
| FIND FOOD BANK | $1,750 |
| GULL LAKE SAILING SCHOOL | $1,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | $1,000 |
| BRIDGEWAY ACADEMY | $1,000 |
| LAKES AREA FOOD SHELF | $1,000 |
| ICA FOOD SHELF | $1,000 |
| ALZHEIMERS ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| LAKES AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $1,000 |
| SURFRIDER FOUNDATION | $875 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF SAN DIEGUITO | $875 |
| HEARTLAND ANIMAL RESCUE TEAM | $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 (FY17–21, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 92% 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.
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 +60% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2021, 9 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2021, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- LALAKES AREA FOOD SHELF5× · 2017–2021 · $9k · revenue +368%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $6k · revenue +105%
- GCGULL CHAIN OF LAKES ASSOCIATION4× · 2017–2020 · $6k · revenue +79%
Funded once
- TGThe Grateful Garment Projectone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue +5%
- BFBerkeley Food Pantryone grant, 2017 · $2k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $1k
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.
End hunger together.
Engaging the community to end hunger
Mission: to inspire and nurture a healthy community by building a local, sustainable, and organic food economy in a vibrant experiential marketplace.vision: to be a nationally recognized marketplace model that connects, educates, and…
The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits informs, promotes, connects and strengthens individual nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
Habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, community, and hope. through advocacy, collaboration, and leadership, hfh-mn advances the work of minnesota's habitat for humanity affiliates to create and preserve affordable…
The minnesota grocers association advances the common interest of those engaged in all aspects of the food industry of mn as a leadership resource. the mga encourages and sponsors educational seminars, conventions and fosters the exchange…
Retrieve a golden of the midwest (ragom) rescues, fosters, and rehomes golden retrievers and golden mixes that can no longer remain in their current environments. the organization ensures each dog receives necessary veterinary care and…
The minnesota business partnership's mission is to maintain a high quality of life for all minnesotans by ensuring that the state's economy remains strong, globally competitive and its prospects for growth bright by working with elected…
The mission of community shares of minnesota is to create a fair, just and equitable minnesota. community shares of minnesota accomplishes its mission by: supporting collective action to eliminate root causes of inequality and injustice;…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Communitygiving and the most unlike its peers is The Babinski Foundation. 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 39 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 40 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 DESERT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITYGIVING ↗
- Who funds LAKES AREA FOOD SHELF ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKES AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds GULL CHAIN OF LAKES ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATE OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds NORTH COUNTRY FOOD ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTHWEST SAN DIEGO COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds Nevada County Habitat For Humanity ↗
- Who funds Bear Yuba Land Trust ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VILLAGE AND KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD IN NEED OF DISTRIBUTION INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND ANIMAL RESCUE TEAM ↗
- Who funds Guild ↗
- Who funds THE EDINA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SKI GULL INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES EQUESTRIAN FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHSIDE ACHIEVEMENT ZONE ↗
- Who funds INTERCONGREGATION COMMUNITIES ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Nevada County ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE CONSERVATION CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds The Grateful Garment Project ↗
- Who funds THE GULL LAKE SAILING SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds NAMI MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds DENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds The Cookie Cart ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THE BABINSKI FOUNDATION ↗
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: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Communitygiving · The Minneapolis Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Minnesota Community Foundation · Initiative Foundation · Land O'Lakes Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · United Way Worldwide · The Blackbaud Giving Fund
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 Spicola Family 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.
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.