· Private foundation
The Sperry Fund
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k55 grants · $298k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $368k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER | $75,000 |
| FRIENDS OF FAFG | $25,000 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ITF ELEUTRIO DUARTE | $20,000 |
| ASSOCIATE ALUMNAE OF DOUGLASS COLLEGE | $20,000 |
| MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY ITF REMY ODDENYO | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST ITF SHIVAN KAITESI KAMUGISHA | $18,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY ITF TANAJIA MOYE-GREEN | $15,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ITF KATHRYN COOK | $15,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY ITF BRYN EVANS | $15,000 |
| PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY ITF ANNIE THOMAS | $15,000 |
| MAINE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ITF CAITLIN PERRIGO | $15,000 |
| RUTGERS UNIVERSITY ITF GOLD CARSON | $15,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY ITF HAILEY ROCHIN | $15,000 |
| OXFORD UNIVERSITY ITF REGINA KONG | $15,000 |
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 US giving — 89% of grant dollars ($4.6M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 11% that went abroad ($544k) is mapped below.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 90% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
Beyond the US — 11% of all-years giving ($544k)
4 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
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 0% for the ones you funded once.
109 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2025, 77 since wound down; 46 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, 46% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $398k 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
- NGNATIONAL GALLERY OF ART2× · 2019–2020 · $250k
- PAPHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER3× · 2022–2025 · $225k
- WCWildlife Conservation Society7× · 2019–2025 · $155k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- NGNational Gallery of Artone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -13%
TRUSTEES OF PHILLIPS ACADEMYone grant, 2024 · $75k · revenue 0%- HMHAWK MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $20k · revenue +133%
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives. [text in quotations is taken from the academy's deed of gift, drafted in 1781] knowledge and goodness "above all, it is expected that the attention…
Located in south hadley, massachusetts, mount holyoke college is a highly selective, nondenominational, residential, research liberal arts college for women that is gender-diverse and welcomes applications from female, transgender, and…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The mission of the institute has remained constant since its founding in 1953. as its restated articles of incorporation state the primary purpose and objective of the howard hughes medical institute shall be the promotion of human…
Hillsdale college is a private liberal arts college with approximately 1,500 students. founded in 1844, the college remains, in the words of its articles of association, "grateful to god for the inestimable blessings resulting from the…
Fairleigh dickinson university is a center of academic excellence dedicated to the preparation of world citizens through global education. the university strives to provide students with the multi-disciplinary, intercultural, and ethical…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Southern New Hampshire University and the most unlike its peers is Haley Family Foundation. 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. 12 of the 412 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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.
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: The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Sperry Fund 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% 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 Sperry Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Sperry Fund 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.