· Private foundation
Stephen and Valerie Spoelhof 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 $10k25 grants · $110k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY | $31,500 |
| CALVIN UNIVERSITY | $13,550 |
| FEBC | $10,025 |
| BEER CITY DOG BISCUITS | $10,000 |
| CARIBBEAN CHRISTIAN CENTER FOR THE DEAF | $10,000 |
| BRIDGE BUILDERS INTERNATIONAL | $10,000 |
| MULTIPLICATION NETWORK | $9,025 |
| OASIS INTERNATIONAL LTD | $9,025 |
| RENEW | $8,025 |
| PARTNERS WORLDWIDE | $8,025 |
| BALTIC PASTORAL INSTITUTE | $6,525 |
| WORLD RENEW | $6,025 |
| LUKE SOCIETY | $6,025 |
| VELO KIDS | $5,500 |
| BETHANY CHRISTIAN SERVICES | $5,025 |
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 (FY18–25, $41k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 71% 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 +37% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 23 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- GCGENEVA CAMP & RETREAT CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $142k · revenue +135%
- CUCALVIN UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $78k · revenue +6%
- BBBRIDGE BUILDERS INTERNATIONAL9× · 2017–2025 · $64k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- FUFOUNDATION UKRAINEone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -13%
- RTRENEW THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTERone grant, 2022 · $4k · revenue -13%
- ACA Christian Ministry in the National Parksone grant, 2019 · $4k · revenue +22%
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.
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…
Partnering with Indigenous Leaders to Spread the Gospel, Serve Others, and Build Community
Provide education in theology, divinity, religious education, ministerial training, business and organizational leadership.
Harvest Bridge equips South Asian Christians to serve their communities more effectively. With our assistance, people and communities in South Asia are transformed by the love of Christ.
Equipping and enabling believers worldwide to conduct church-based evangelism projects to reach unbelievers and make disciples.
World of Opportunity is an evangelical ministry that supports missionaries in the United States and around the world as they bring the Word of the Lord into peoples lives. The missionaries supported by World of Opportunity share the Gospel…
To provide strategic teaching about prayer, prophecy, and intercession in the US and abroad. Books, manuals, and audio teachings are also used to equip Christians in strategic level spiritual prayer and warfare.
Habitat for humanity of central iowa, inc. works in partnership with god and people everywhere, from all walks of life, to develop communities with god's people in need by building houses, so that there are decent houses in decent…
Global outreach ministries exists to bring transformation to the nations of latin america by training influential leaders, planting relevant churches, and mobilizing christ-followers to transform their communities.
World christian broadcasting exists so that people in places best served by broadcast media become aware of the good news of jesus christ and want to know more. geographic areas that cannot be easily served by missionaries are a priority.
Providing guality Christian education to the network generation
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Luke Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is Quality Affordable Homes. 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 30 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 17% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 70 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 GENEVA CAMP & RETREAT CENTER ↗
- Who funds CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE BUILDERS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Untold Inc ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds OASIS INTERNATIONAL LTD NFP ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLICATION NETWORK MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds World Renew ↗
- Who funds THE LUKE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION HOUSE ↗
- Who funds The Potters House ↗
- Who funds CARIBBEAN CHRISTIAN CENTRE FOR THE DEAF ↗
- Who funds LAKESHORE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds FAR EAST BROADCASTING COMPANY ↗
- Who funds VOX UNITED ↗
- Who funds HOPE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds ODC NETWORK ↗
- Who funds VELO KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds JUBILEE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds HOMECOR ↗
- Who funds BENJAMIN'S HOPE ↗
- Who funds Resourcing Christian Education International ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds WHEATON ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds WORLD BICYCLE RELIEF NFP ↗
- Who funds BEER CITY DOG BISCUITS ↗
- Who funds Living Stones Academy ↗
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 Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area Inc · John and Judy Spoelhof Foundation · Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation · Barnabas Foundation · Jim and Ginger Jurries Foundation · Craig and Wendy Spoelhof Foundation · Douglas & Sandra Dekock Family Foun · Dick and Betsy Devos Family Foundation · Christian Community Foundation Inc · Grand Haven Area Community Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Howard Miller 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 Stephen and Valerie Spoelhof 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Stephen and Valerie Spoelhof Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Stephen and Valerie Spoelhof 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.