· Private foundation
Sterling 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SportsQuest | $8,000 |
| Concordia Theological Seminary | $6,000 |
| African Inland Mission | $6,000 |
| Daily Hope | $4,000 |
| One Hope | $4,000 |
| Assembly of God | $4,000 |
| Reaching Avery Ministries | $3,000 |
| LCMS Youth Ministries | $2,500 |
| Mission of Christ Network | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| Samaritans Purse | $2,000 |
| CoreLuv | $2,000 |
| Hope and Care Outreach | $2,000 |
| Childrens Hunger Fund | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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 +83% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 14 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- CLCAMP LINN HAVEN INC3× · 2021–2025 · $54k · revenue +249%
- SQSports Quest6× · 2020–2025 · $33k · revenue +227%
- RAREACHING AVERY MINISTRY6× · 2020–2025 · $18k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- MLMOUNTAINSIDE LUTHERAN CHURCH2× · 2024–2025 · $50k
- MDMisc Donors 6 all at 1000 eachone grant, 2022 · $6k
- SESix entities 1000 and underone grant, 2023 · $5k
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.
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…
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.
Bible Translation and acts of Christian Services
The organization is dedicated to reaching people for christ through an international network of christians who journey with the poor and marginalized, bringing practical and spiritual support with hope of a better future,(continued on…
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.
Cross to Light is a nondenominational Christian organization providing spiritual education and physical aid to people in need around the world. Since 2005, Cross to Light has helped people cross from darkness to light by hearing the Gospel…
We minister to orphans and widows in their distress by transitioning children from orphanages into loving families. We do this through Christ- centered care, training and social work.
Equipping and enabling believers worldwide to conduct church-based evangelism projects to reach unbelievers and make disciples.
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.
Across nations is dedicated to spreading the gospel through establishing, developing and promoting all aspects of church ministry.
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.
Spread the gospel of jesus christ
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Missio Christi Network and the most unlike its peers is Sports Quest. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 44 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 CAMP LINN HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds Sports Quest ↗
- Who funds REACHING AVERY MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN BIBLE TRANSLATORS INC ↗
- Who funds Purpose Driven Connection DBA Pastor Ricks Daily Hope ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CUP ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HUNGER FUND ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLICATION NETWORK MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MISSIO CHRISTI NETWORK ↗
- Who funds HOPE AND CARE OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds Open Doors With Brother Andrew Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BREAD OF LIFE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds THERE'S HOPE FOR THE HUNGRY INC ↗
- Who funds Compassion International Incorporated ↗
- Who funds Childcare Worldwide ↗
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 Bolick Foundation · Servant Foundation · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Thrivent Financial for Lutherans · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Sterling 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 Sterling Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sterling 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.