· Private foundation
The Sparks Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k2 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
- $250k+1 grant · $375k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| America First Policy Institute | $375,000 |
| Family Is Everything | $10,000 |
| Operation Light Shine | $10,000 |
| Covenant Church of Heber Springs | $5,000 |
| Ambassador Services International | $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 (FY18–22, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 48% 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 88% of The Sparks 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. Read by recipient address, 34% of the giving stays in TN; read by stated purpose it is 14% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +87% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 15 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- AFAMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE INC2× · 2023–2024 · $425k · revenue +87%
- OFOHER FOUNDATION INC FKA BEAT THE ODDS INC3× · 2021–2023 · $162k · revenue ×25 · 27% of their budget
- CSCONGRESSIONAL SPORTSMEN'S FOUNDATION6× · 2018–2023 · $111k · revenue +35%
Funded once
AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $70k · revenue +36%- OSOklahoma State University Foundatioone grant, 2020 · $50k
- AOAMERICANS OF FAITHgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +219%
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.
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.
To strengthen the association of former students, promote the interests and welfare of texas a&m university, perpetuate ties of affection and esteem formed in university or college days, and serve the student body.
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.
The florida state university foundation enhances the academic mission and vision of florida state university through its organized fundraising activities and funds management. the fsu foundation accomplishes its mission by fostering…
Aacsb international provides quality assurance of business school programs, the latest in business education intelligence, thought leadership, and learning and development services.
To develop, foster, promote and protect programs for the general welfare, including economic, social, educational and political well-being of farm people of the great state of tennessee.
Sof is called to empower warriors to find purpose, be resilient, and live well. we develop and provide customized treatment plans for veterans through our national network of partners.
Wilberforce university is a historically black college and university and the primary mission is to engage, support, and assist students in identifying and preparing for their respective purposes in life as social change agents, social…
Union university provides christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to church and society.
Improve the food value chain in developing countries by mobilizing corporate volunteers to share knowledge and expertise with small and growing food processors.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
North greenville university exists to glorify god by cultivating graduates who are equipped to serve as transformational leaders for church and society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is America First Policy Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Diamond Derby Inc Barnstable Brown Party. 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 30 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 66 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 AMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER MEMPHIS INC ↗
- Who funds OHER FOUNDATION INC FKA BEAT THE ODDS INC ↗
- Who funds CONGRESSIONAL SPORTSMEN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds GARY SINISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUND ↗
- Who funds PALMETTO FRONT LINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JORDAN THOMAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS OF FAITH ↗
- Who funds FARMYARD ANIMAL RESCUE ↗
- Who funds OPERATION LIGHT SHINE ↗
- Who funds MEMPHIS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE BULLDOG CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds AMBASSADOR SERVICES INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THISTLE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LOVE ONE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Family Is Everything Outreach ↗
- Who funds DIAMOND DERBY INC BARNSTABLE BROWN PARTY ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds WORLD RELIEF CORP OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EVANGELICALS ↗
- Who funds BRIARCREST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds PERSIST NASHVILLE ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds THE OMAHA HOME FOR BOYS ↗
- Who funds TASTE THE IMPACT 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: Christian Community Foundation of Memphis · Nashville Predators Foundation · Collier Community Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee Inc · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · Greater Houston Community Foundation · The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Servant 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 Sparks 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% 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.