· Private foundation
Swanson Family 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 |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS | $7,500 |
| DOUGLAS COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF ALASKA INC | $5,000 |
| BEANS CAFE INC | $5,000 |
| COVENANT HOUSE ALASKA | $3,500 |
| COVENANT HOUSE ALASKA | $2,500 |
| CHRISTOPHER WALDENS FOUNDATION OF HOPE | $1,800 |
| KENAI RIVER SPORTFISHING ASSOCIATION INC | $500 |
| LEADING WITH LEGACY - THE HEART PROJECT | $300 |
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, $94k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Swanson Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +19% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- CHCOVENANT HOUSE ALASKA6× · 2020–2025 · $61k · revenue +7%
- FBFood Bank of Alaska5× · 2020–2025 · $33k · revenue +83%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches3× · 2023–2025 · $23k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- CAChallenge Alaskagraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +89%
- HCHope Community Resources Incone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -8%
- TTTBA Theatre Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +37%
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.
Dedicated to strengthening the multi-disciplinary response to child abuse. We strive to ensure that professionals throughout Alaska are equipped to do the best job possible at holding offenders accountable and helping children and families…
To assist low income individuals and families with housing and housing improvements in Alaska.
To increase affordable housing and end homelessness in Alaska.
Strengthen our culture of giving and improve the quality on life among the people of the Arctic Slope region of Alaska by providing and administering grants to support the community health and economic stability of the villages of Point…
To expand and preserve year-round rental opportunities that are affordable to moderate, low, and very low-income households to foster a welcoming environment for demographically and socio-economically diverse populations in Anchorage, AK.
The Alaska Hospital & Healthcare Association (AHHA) is a non-profit trade association representing more than 65 hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, and other healthcare partners.Our members are distributed across…
Refugee professional integration and career advancement. Project Alaska commited to empowering our clients with the skills and resources required for career advancement and occupational prosperity,enabling them to lead their best lives.
to promote, support and advocate for Alaska agriculture
To provide meaningful access to justice in resolving civil legal problems for low-income clients, thus promoting family stability and reducing legal consequences of poverty.
The mission of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness is to provide dynamic leadership to unite Anchorage in making homelessness rare, brief, and one-time.
Promote and encourage cooperation among Alaska electric utilities and their customers while promoting the operation of electrical plants adequate for the needs of Alaskan consumers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Arc of Anchorage and the most unlike its peers is Christopher Waldens Foundation of Hope. 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 38 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 31 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 COVENANT HOUSE ALASKA ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Alaska ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Beans Cafe Inc ↗
- Who funds The Alaska Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Challenge Alaska ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Clubs of Southcentral Alaska ↗
- Who funds ANCHORAGE COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Anchorage Museum Association ↗
- Who funds UPPER SUSITNA FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds Douglas County Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF ANCHORAGE ↗
- Who funds Hope Community Resources Inc ↗
- Who funds TBA Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds Catholic Social Services ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ALASKA ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARCTIC WINTER GAMES TEAM ALASKA ↗
- Who funds ANCHORAGE YOUTH COURT ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION ↗
- Who funds ABUSED WOMEN'S AID IN CRISIS INC ↗
- Who funds KENAI RIVER SPORTFISHING ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ALASKA PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds ALYESKA SKI CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds The Arc of Anchorage ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN SOUP KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTOPHER WALDENS FOUNDATION OF HOPE ↗
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 Alaska Community Foundation · Rasmuson Foundation · The Carr Foundation Inc · Richard L and Diane M Block Foundation · United Way of Anchorage · Valley Hospital Association Inc Dba Mat-Su Health Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Providence Alaska Foundation · Alaska Children's Trust · Atwood Foundation Inc · Crowley Cares Foundation · Give Back 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 Swanson 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.