· Private foundation
The Donald and Constance Sperling Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $16k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $156k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION | $56,000 |
| THE WOODEN FLOOR | $50,000 |
| UCI FOUNDATION - BRAIN CAMP | $50,000 |
| LAGUNA ART MUSEUM | $15,550 |
| OPERA LAGUNA | $7,100 |
| SAMUELI ACADEMY | $6,000 |
| THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE | $5,900 |
| GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND | $5,000 |
| NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $550 |
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 (FY21–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +81% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 4 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k 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
- TWTHE WOODEN FLOOR FOR YOUTH MOVEMENT8× · 2017–2025 · $431k · revenue +10%
- OFORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2025 · $227k · revenue +83%
- LALAGUNA ART MUSEUM4× · 2022–2025 · $56k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- SFSILBER FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP LCADone grant, 2022 · $50k
- SCSOUTH COUNTY OUTREACHgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +47%
- CRCRISTO REY DE LA SALLE EAST BAY HIGH SCHOOL INCone grant, 2023 · $20k
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.
To promote, produce, and sponsor events and activities that encourage the appreciation, study and performance of the arts.
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
Enriches and transforms lives by entertaining, educating, engaging our community through exceptional programs for our stages, for the classroom, and for our community.
The hammer museum at ucla believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world.
To celebrate the human experience while encouraging the participation of artist and audience in theatre productions.
Los angeles pacific university exists to deliver high quality, accessible christ-centered education to learners everywhere.
We provide an unparalleled arts and acdademic education in a creative, challenging and nurturing environment to a diverse student body passionate about the arts, preparing them to reach their highest potential.
See schedule 0founded in 1994, opera santa barbara is the signature provider of professional opera on the california central coast. we aspire to be a cultural leader in the santa barbara region, voicing and advancing our community's spirit…
Engaging people through provocative meaningful experiences that challenge, connect and inspire. long beach opera produces operas in performing arts venues in long beach and regionally, and produces opera for youth in schools.
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
Slo rep strengthens theatre's cultural influence and enriches the central coast by producing professional theatre, nurturing artists and providing theatre education for children and adults.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Laguna Playhouse and the most unlike its peers is San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 39 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 THE WOODEN FLOOR FOR YOUTH MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COUNTY OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA DANCE FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COAST REPERTORY INC ↗
- Who funds OPERA LAGUNA ↗
- Who funds SAMUELI ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Collaborative Courts Foundation ↗
- Who funds PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds SMILE-A-MILE ↗
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 · Macgillivray Family Foundation · Weaver Family Private Foundation · The Hanauer Family Foundation · The William Gillespie Foundation · Laguna Beach Community Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Orange County · Sempra Foundation · Roberta Freeman Cox Charitable Foundation · Croul Family Foundation · The William Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation · Farmers & Merchants Bank 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 The Donald and Constance Sperling 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 The Donald and Constance Sperling Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Donald and Constance Sperling 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.