· Public charity
The Light Foundation
The mission of the organization is to create a generation of successful youth by providing life-changing opportunities.
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.
The 4 grants below total $57,950 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $87,251 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $29,301 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $44k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WALKER SCOTTISH RITE CLINIC FOR CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE DISORDERS | $34,235 |
| SCOTTISH RITE FOUNDATION OF MISSOURI | $10,000 |
| MARYVILLE UNIVERSITY | $8,700 |
| HAVEN OF GRACE | $5,015 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 94% of your 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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 1 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, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $34k 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
- MUMaryville University - St Louis8× · 2017–2024 · $317k · revenue +38%
- THTHE HAVEN OF GRACE3× · 2022–2024 · $76k · revenue +33%
- TSTHE SAINT LOUIS WOMENS CHORALE3× · 2017–2019 · $30k · revenue +92%
Funded once
- DIDEMOLAY INTERNATIONALone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue -2%
- TSTHE SCOTTISH RITE FOUNDATION SOUTHERN JURISDICTION USA INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $12k · revenue +74%
- AAANCIENT & ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE VALLEY OF ST LOUIS & ITS COORDINATEone grant, 2018 · $11k · revenue -52%
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 enhance the quality of life for colorado's children and their families by supporting high quality, collaborative programs for the prevention and treatment of childhood language disorders.
Domestic fraternal organization
Domestic fraternal organization
None
Endeavor to give children with speech and language disorders the opportunity to reach their full potential by providing financial grants for treatment.
Provide higher education scholarships and financial aid to residents of georgia attending schools in georgia. financial aid to rite care clinics for children's language disorders.
Fraternal and scottish rite charities
None
Domestic fraternal association
Domestic fraternal organization
To promote and provide an educational, cultural, and historical forum for printing, research, and distribution of articles on american constitutional government and the bill of rights, religion in america and around the world, and share…
Establishing and maintaining a fund or funds to be used along with the income there from exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary and educational purposes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Scottish Rite Foundation Southern Jurisdiction Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Saint Louis Womens Chorale. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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.
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 Maryville University - St Louis ↗
- Who funds SCOTTISH RITE FOUNDATION OF MISSOURI INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAVEN OF GRACE ↗
- Who funds SCOTTISH RITE CLINIC FOR CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE DISORDERS OF ST LOUIS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAINT LOUIS WOMENS CHORALE ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S DYSLEXIA CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds DEMOLAY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE SCOTTISH RITE FOUNDATION SOUTHERN JURISDICTION USA INC ↗
- Who funds ANCIENT & ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE VALLEY OF ST LOUIS & ITS COORDINATE ↗
- Who funds THE SUPREME COUNCIL 33 ANC&ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE OF FREEMASONRY S JR ↗
- Who funds SRKC GIVING ↗
- Who funds THE HOUSE OF THE TEMPLE HISTORIC PRESERVATION FOUNDAION 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: 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 The Light 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 Light Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Light 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.