· Private foundation
Sword and Spoon Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $53k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AUSTIN CENTER FOR FAITH WORK | $20,000 |
| TRINITY GRACE CHURCH | $13,000 |
| ARENA HALL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SWORD & SPOON WORKSHOP INC | $10,000 |
| BETHEL AME CHURCH | $5,000 |
| LEADERSHIP TRANSFORMATIONS | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| WORLDVISION INC | $1,900 |
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 (FY17–17, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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.
16 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 28% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $46k 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
- PIPIONEER INSTITUTE INC2× · 2017–2019 · $93k · revenue +117%
- CTChristianity Today International3× · 2020–2023 · $71k · revenue +128%
- LTLeadership Transformation Inc5× · 2017–2024 · $53k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- SUSTAND UP REPUBLIC FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue 0%
- NBNEW BEGINNINGS COMMUNITY CHURCHone grant, 2019 · $22k
- TOTHINK OF USgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +982%
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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Bibleproject's mission is to help people experience the bible as a unified story that leads to jesus. this is achieved by creating biblical videos to be regularly released on a newly-created youtube channel. (continued on schedule o.)each…
The Center of Theological Inquiry is an independent research institution with an international visiting scholar program which convenes researchers in an ideal setting for interdisciplinary inquiries where theology casts light on global…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The quincy institute promotes ideas that move u.s. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace. qi's staff and non-resident experts expose the costs and consequences of…
At Roger Williams University, students are prepared to be thinkers and doers ready to solve challenging problems with innovative solutions. RWU offers robust offerings of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across eight…
Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. activate partners with u.s. based funders, research institutions, and other pillars of the hard technology community to help entrepreneurial…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Biglife international inc. empowers believers worldwide to reach and disciple their own people for jesus christ.
Provide education in theology, divinity, religious education, ministerial training, business and organizational leadership.
The international leadership institute (ili) changes history by accelerating the spread of the gospel through training and mobilizing leaders of leaders to reach their nations. ili accomplishes this purpose through cutting edge leadership…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Think of Us and the most unlike its peers is Kataluma Inc. 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 23 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% 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.
37 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. 37 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 SWORD & SPOON WORKSHOP INC ↗
- Who funds PIONEER INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Christianity Today International ↗
- Who funds WORLD VISION INC ↗
- Who funds Leadership Transformation Inc ↗
- Who funds AND Campaign Inc ↗
- Who funds STAND UP REPUBLIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THINK OF US ↗
- Who funds Global Impact ↗
- Who funds THE BASEBALL INC ↗
- Who funds InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSA ↗
- Who funds Arena Hall ↗
- Who funds ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Teneo Inc ↗
- Who funds KATALUMA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Bowdoin College ↗
- Who funds Rodman For Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds Praxis Inc ↗
- Who funds THE AXIOM PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BELMONT HILL SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILANTHROPY ROUNDTABLE ↗
- Who funds Bridgewater State University Foundation ↗
- Who funds WILDFLOWER INC ↗
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: Boston Foundation Inc · Servant Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Network for Good · 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 Sword and Spoon 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
- Bridgewater State University Foundation — 2% of income from government
- The Baseball Inc — 1% of income from government
- Habitat for Humanity Metrowest- Greater Worcester Inc — 1% of income from government
- Boston Arts Academy Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Sword and Spoon Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sword and Spoon 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.