Spencer Family Foundation

Spencer Family Foundation is a small, closed, family-operated private foundation, not a professionally staffed grantmaking institution. Its officers are exclusively family: John Spencer (President), Janelle Spencer (Secretary/Treasurer), and Jason Spencer (Director), joined by outside director Amy Sandrene and a compensated administrator, Laura Murphy, whose pay ($34,083-$67,283 across the 2018-2022 filings) suggests she handles day-to-day operations rather than the family setting policy. There is no dedicated grants portal, no listed application form, no published deadline, and the foundation's own IRS-derived record marks application instructions as none, despite being nominally flagged as accepting applications in aggregator databases. That combination is the clearest signal available: on paper it looks open, in practice it behaves like a fully relationship-driven funder.

Importantly, the domain most databases (including this one) associate with 'Spencer Family Foundation' — spencer.org — actually belongs to The Spencer Foundation, a $500M+ Chicago-based education-research funder with a SmartSimple application portal and $24M+ in annual giving. That is a different organization entirely, and grant seekers should disregard spencer.org's RFPs, deadlines, and contact address when targeting this Portland foundation.

Grantee data shows two distinct funding tracks. The first is hyper-local: roughly 88% of grant dollars (28 of 32 known grants) go to organizations in Yamhill County and the Portland metro area — childcare centers in Lafayette and McMinnville, a compassion/dental clinic, a Newberg-Dundee police 'Shop with a Cop' program, a Catholic parish, and a youth counseling nonprofit. These read as grants sourced through the Spencer family's own community relationships rather than competitive review. The second track is larger, less local dollars funneled through a donor-advised-fund sponsor (National Christian Foundation, $130,000) and one out-of-state nonprofit (Miracle Corners of the World in New York, $100,000), suggesting the family also uses the foundation as a pass-through vehicle for faith-based and youth-leadership giving directed more privately.

First-time applicants without an existing relationship to the Spencer family or a current grantee should expect a cold approach to go nowhere; the realistic path in is a warm introduction from a funded organization or a shared community or professional connection in Portland or Yamhill County.

Recent IRS filings show a volatile capital history rather than steady endowed grantmaking. Net assets fell from $3.5M (FY2018) to about $651K (FY2022/2023 filing) as the foundation paid out more than it earned — grants paid ranged $77,951-$217,710 a year against negligible investment income (often under $2,000). Then FY2024 brought a $3M contribution, nearly quintupling net assets back to $3.5M, and FY2025 shows renewed distribution activity: $255,532 in total expenses, about 91.2% (roughly $233,000) as charitable disbursements, even though investment income was just $470 — confirming the giving is funded by spending down the newly contributed capital, not by portfolio returns. Further back, 2011 stands out as an outlier year with $1.93M in total giving ($1.75M in grants paid) against otherwise-typical years in the $200K-$300K range, likely a one-time large distribution rather than a new baseline.

At the grant level, the foundation's own typical-grant-size data (10-grant sample) puts the median at $11,625 and the average at $21,771, ranging from $500 to $78,610. A broader look at 32 tracked grants totaling $473,572 (average $14,799) shows a similar shape: most checks are small (Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, $500; Newberg-Dundee Police Dept 'Shop with a Cop,' $1,500 per grant) while a handful of relationships receive $20,000-$35,000 per grant, repeated across multiple years (Little Bird Childcare Lafayette, $93,040 across 3 grants; Miracle Corners of the World, $100,000 across 4 grants).

By purpose, childcare accounts for roughly 32% of tracked dollars ($152,190 across three childcare providers), a donor-advised-fund pass-through (National Christian Foundation) for about 27% ($130,000), youth/community development (Miracle Corners of the World) for about 21% ($100,000), health/dental access (Compassion Connect and cystic-fibrosis-related gifts) for about 10% ($46,500), and youth counseling, civic, and parish-adjacent local grants for the remaining roughly 10%. Geographically, 87.5% of individual grants (28 of 32) go to Oregon organizations concentrated in Yamhill County, with the remainder to New York.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $1,000 of Spencer's $3.2M asset base and share the same broad 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' IRS classification, and — like Spencer — none have a listed website, which at this size tier is itself a strong signal of closed, relationship-based grantmaking rather than coincidence. Spencer differs mainly in documentation: its grantee history (32 tracked grants totaling $473,572) and 990 trail are unusually visible for a foundation this size, giving applicants an actual roadmap of geographic and programmatic fit that most $3M family foundations don't expose. Grant seekers targeting any foundation in this peer set should expect the same playbook: find the grantee list, find a warm introduction, and skip cold letters of inquiry.

No independent news coverage of Spencer Family Foundation surfaced in web search — searches for news and announcements returned only content about the unrelated, Chicago-based Spencer Foundation. The only verifiable recent activity comes from IRS Form 990-PF filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN 20-3401912, filings through fiscal year 2025). In FY2024, the foundation received a $3,000,000 contribution — a major capitalization event that nearly quintupled net assets from about $651,000 to $3.5 million in a single year, while that year's grantmaking expenses stayed modest at $147,083. In FY2025, net assets settled at $3.2 million and charitable disbursements resumed at scale: roughly 91.2% of $255,532 in total expenses (about $233,000) went to grants, funded almost entirely from the new capital since investment income was only $470.

Leadership has been stable: John Spencer (President), Janelle Spencer (Secretary/Treasurer), and Jason Spencer (Director) appear unchanged across every available filing from 2018-2022, alongside outside director Amy Sandrene. Administrator Laura Murphy's compensation dropped from a $63,000-$67,000 range (2018-2021) to $34,083 in the FY2022 filing, consistent with reduced hours or a role change, though the filings don't state a reason. No new program announcements, grant-portal launches, or leadership transitions were found in web research.

Grant seekers should treat the FY2024 capital infusion as the most actionable data point: it signals the family currently has more to distribute than in any year since FY2018, and the FY2025 filing confirms they are actively spending it down.

Because Spencer Family Foundation has no public application portal, deadline, or listed grants page, conventional grant-seeking tactics — cold letters of inquiry, portal submissions, RFP responses — will not work here. A few funder-specific tips:

• Do not use spencer.org. That domain, contact address, and any RFP or deadline pages belong to The Spencer Foundation, a $500M+ Chicago education-research funder — a completely different organization. Submitting there wastes the effort and signals to anyone who does review your file that you haven't done basic due diligence on either funder.
• Go in through a warm connection. Every large, multi-year relationship in the grantee data (Little Bird Childcare's two locations, Compassion Connect, Northwest Catholic Counseling Center, Miracle Corners of the World) reads as a sustained personal relationship rather than a one-off competitive award — repeat gifts to the same handful of organizations across years. If your organization has any board member, donor, or volunteer with a Portland-metro or Yamhill County community connection, especially in childcare, faith/parish networks, or local civic safety, that is the realistic way in.
• Match the size and specificity of the ask to the pattern. Typical grants run $500-$35,000 per gift; opening with a $100K+ ask as a first-time, unintroduced organization is out of step with everything in the visible history except the two largest, clearly relationship-driven recipients.
• Track the Form 990-PF, not a website. With no grants page, the best source of current intelligence is the foundation's 990-PF via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN 20-3401912) — it will show new grantees and whether the FY2024 capital infusion continues to fund elevated giving into FY2026.
• Consider the donor-advised-fund angle. $130,000 of tracked giving moved through National Christian Foundation, a DAF sponsor — if your organization is faith-based, an introduction through NCF's donor network may be more productive than approaching the Spencer family directly.
• Common mistake to avoid: taking an 'accepting applications' flag in aggregator databases at face value. The foundation's own filings list no application instructions, form, or deadline — this is a closed funder despite how it may appear in directories.