· Private foundation
The Lightweaver 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 $10k15 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $29k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $65k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INTERMOUNTAIN FOUNDATION | $65,249 |
| OPERATION LITERACY | $18,704 |
| THE LEAGUE OF UTAH WRITERS | $10,000 |
| COURAGE REINS | $6,781 |
| HARRINGTON CENTER | $5,665 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,050 |
| HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN | $5,000 |
| REACH OUT UTAH | $5,000 |
| SCENIC VIEW ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| DYSLEXIA CENTER OF UTAH | $2,540 |
| INTRODUCING TOMORROW | $2,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF UTAH | $1,915 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $1,880 |
| BIG WORLD NETWORK | $1,000 |
| BRANDON DEWITT FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 28% 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +86% since the first grant, against +49% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 8 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- CRCourage Reins6× · 2017–2024 · $34k · revenue +86%
- OLOperation Literacy2× · 2023–2024 · $25k · revenue +492%
- TRTHE ROAD HOME3× · 2017–2022 · $2k · revenue +121%
Funded once
- VDVarious Donationsone grant, 2018 · $17k
- LHLifting Hands Internationalone grant, 2022 · $11k · revenue -23%
- OFOUT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
Utah Humanities collaborates with libraries, museums, historical societies, schools, colleges, and cultural and civic groups; provides capacity-building opportunities for volunteers and professionals in the cultural sector; presents…
We help families experiencing homelessness find lasting independence and security.
Building bright futures through literacy, digital skills, math, and conversation.
Provide loving home environment, continuity of care, and empowerment of displaced and fragile children.
We inspire and transform students with learning differences into confident, independent, and successful readers. We collaborate with colleagues and members of the community for the welfare and value of our diverse learners.
To provide educaitonal services to students in the Salt Lake County area as a public charter school, to support education initiatives, and to help prepare students to be successful in life by developing healthy lifestyle habits abd by…
Provide housing to low-income families in provo, utah.
Big brothers big sisters of utah's vision is that all children achieve success in life. our mission is to create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.
Assisting persons with disabilities to develop independent living and social skills, assisting with housing and transportation needs, rights advocacy, and counseling.
Children's house international provides ethical adoption services, child focused recruitment, and family support. we support disadvantaged children with humanitarian aid in countries worldwide.
Ronald McDonald House Mountain West surrounds families with the support they need to be near and care for their seriously ill or injured children.
Book harvest provides books to children who need them and engages families and communities to promote children's lifelong literacy and academic success.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Utah Inc and the most unlike its peers is Brandon Dewitt Foundation 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 20 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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 103 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 Courage Reins ↗
- Who funds WORLDBUILDERS INC ↗
- Who funds Operation Literacy ↗
- Who funds League of Utah Writers ↗
- Who funds Lifting Hands International ↗
- Who funds Utah Pride Center Inc ↗
- Who funds MAUI FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Generations Humanitarian ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds ScenicView Academy ↗
- Who funds BRANDON DEWITT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MY STORY MATTERS ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD HOME ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
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: Sorenson Legacy Foundation · Thom & Gail Williamsen Family Foundation · George S and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation · The Community Foundation of Utah · Kennecott Utah Copper Visitors Center Charitable Foundation · The Miner Foundation · Bill and Pat Child Family Foundation · The Ashton Family Foundation · Larry H Miller and Gail Miller Family Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · American Express Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc
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 Lightweaver 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.
- Horizons for Homeless Children — 21% of income from government
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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 The Lightweaver Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lightweaver 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.