· Private foundation
The Sparks Foundation Trust Agreement C/O Ray a Sparks
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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 83% of THE SPARKS FOUNDATION TRUST AGREEMENT C/O RAY A SPARKS’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $48k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $135k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE FIELDS CHURCH | $70,000 |
| ST JOHNS LUTHERAN SCHOOL | $65,000 |
| EMERALD ACRES SPORTS COMPLEX | $25,000 |
| COLES COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $12,500 |
| MATTOON AREA FAMILY YMCA | $10,000 |
| SARAH BUSH LINCOLN FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| WOODLAWN CHAPEL | $3,000 |
| MATTOON PUBLIC LIBRARY | $2,500 |
| LIFELINKS | $1,000 |
| FIT - 2 - SERVE | $1,000 |
| CAMP NEW HOPE | $1,000 |
| MATTOON COMMUNITY FOOD CENTER | $500 |
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, $108k) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
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.
21 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 10 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- CCColes County Habitat For Humanity8× · 2017–2024 · $45k · revenue +33%
- CNCAMP NEW HOPE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $28k · revenue +24%
- ECELEVATE CCIC INC3× · 2019–2021 · $11k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- ICIMMACULATE CONCEPTION PARISHone grant, 2022 · $10k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $5k
- PCPike County YMCAone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -21%
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 put christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind, and body for all. activities include child care; youth development through a variety of youth sports, leadership programs and special needs…
Sports program for youth
Youth for Christ of Mecosta & Montcalm Counties seeks to reach young people everywhere. Working with the local church and like-minded partners to raise up followers of Jesus who exhibit godliness in lifestyle, devotion to Gods word,…
The mission of the lake county ymca is to put christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.
The YMCA of Corsicana is a charitable community service organization which includes all ages, abilities, incomes, races and relitions. It is dedicated to nurturing stong kids, famiies, and communities by puttin christian principles into…
Our mission is to build strong kids, strong families, and strong communities. The YMCA of the Chippewa Valley is a community centered association dedicated to building a healthy spirit, mind and body for all people, while maintaining an…
To organize human, financial, and material resources to encourage the spiritual, physical, mental, social and leadership growth of any individual. ymca of mccook is dedicated to building strong kids, strong families and strong communities…
To put christian principles into practice through programs that build a healty spirit, mind, andbody for all.
The champaign family ymca's mission is to put christian principles into practice through programs that enhance personal growth and improve health of spirit, and mind and body for all. the champaign family ymca serves more than 5,000 people…
To put christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.
To develop, finance and operate an indoor and outdoor sports complex in a blighted area in mattoon, il that will benefit the residents and business communities in illinois.
The missoula family ymca's mission is to put christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all. the y serves families and individuals of all ages, abilities, incomes, races and religions.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Pike County Ymca and the most unlike its peers is Fit-2-Serve Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 14% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
14 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. 14 of the 34 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 MATTOON AREA FAMILY YMCA CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Coles County Habitat For Humanity ↗
- Who funds CAMP NEW HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds ELEVATE CCIC INC ↗
- Who funds MATTOON COMMUNITY FOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds Pike County YMCA ↗
- Who funds Fit-2-Serve Inc ↗
- Who funds LAKE LAND COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LITTLE THEATRE - ON THE SQUARE INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL ROCKFORD COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds A Ray Of Hope On Earth ↗
- Who funds MATTOON PRIDE SOFTBALL INC DBA MATTOON PRIDE ATHLETICS ↗
- Who funds MID-IL BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS ↗
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: Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation · United Way of Coles County Inc · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · Amazonsmile Foundation · 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 The Sparks Foundation Trust Agreement C/O Ray a Sparks 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.