· Private foundation
Swenson 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $290k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+6 grants · $4.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY MN DULUTH | $1,600,000 |
| CHOC CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| FRIENDS OF HOLY INNOCENTS | $500,000 |
| CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY | $500,000 |
| CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY | $500,000 |
| CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY | $500,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SUPERIOR FOUNDATION INC | $218,041 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SUPERIOR FOUNDATION INC | $218,041 |
| UNIVERSITY MN DULUTH | $132,000 |
| THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| OLIVE CREST | $100,000 |
| OCEAN INSTITUTE | $70,000 |
| LUTHERAN BIBLE TRANSLATORS | $62,500 |
| HUNGRY FOR MUSIC | $62,500 |
| CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $221k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 Swenson 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.
35 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 8 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $215k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-SUPERIOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS FOUNDATION INC7× · 2019–2025 · $8.8M · revenue +100% · 65% of their budget
- CLCALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $7.1M · revenue +18%
- CFCHOC FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2025 · $3.2M · revenue +60%
Funded once
SHARE OUR STRENGTHone grant, 2023 · $125k · revenue +8%- ILIMAGINATION LIBRARY INCone grant, 2022 · $125k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $100k
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.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Inspired by lutheran scholarly tradition and the liberal arts, augustana provides an education of enduring worth that challenges the intellect, fosters integrity and integrates faith with learning and service in a diverse world.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
University of the sciences prepares students to become leaders, innovators, and skilled practitioners in the sciences, the health professions, and related disciplines. we deliver excellence in teaching, research, and service through a safe…
Since 1890, whitworth has held fast to its founding mission of providing "an education of mind and heart" through rigorous intellectual inquiry guided by dedicated christian scholars.
Los angeles pacific university exists to deliver high quality, accessible christ-centered education to learners everywhere.
Scu is a catholic and jesuit institution that makes student learning its central focus, promotes faculty and staff learning in its various forms, and exhibits organizational learning.
Ashland university, guided by our christian heritage, is a comprehensive, private university that provides a transformative learning experience, shaping graduates who work, serve and lead with integrity in their local, national, and global…
Arizona christian university provides a biblically-integrated, liberal arts education equipping graduates to serve the lord jesus christ in all aspects of life, as leaders of influence and excellence.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Lawrence university of wisconsin, through its undergraduate residential college and conservatory of music, educates students in the liberal arts and sciences. the university is devoted to excellence and integrity in all of its activities…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Olive Crest and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Holy Innocents. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 60 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 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-SUPERIOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHOC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HOLY INNOCENTS ↗
- Who funds OCEAN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OLIVE CREST ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Segerstrom Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds FURNISHING HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN CHURCH CHARITIES FUND ↗
- Who funds Achievement Institute for STEM Scholars ↗
- Who funds THE DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST USA INC ↗
- Who funds BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN BIBLE TRANSLATORS INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL WELFARE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC ↗
- Who funds SUPERIOR PUBLIC MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds HUNGRY FOR MUSIC ↗
- Who funds GIVSUM 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: Orange County Community Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · 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 Swenson 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Swenson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Swenson Family 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.