Spia Foundation

Spia Foundation is a small, closely held family foundation (EIN 13-3318172) established with an IRS ruling date of December 1986, based at 22 E 11th St in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and run entirely by Winkelman family trustees — Victoria P. Winkelman-Dedet, Colin F. Winkelman, Marius O. Winkelman, and Dorinda P. Winkelman, with correspondence addressed '% Mark Winkelman.' No officer receives compensation in any year on record, consistent with an unpaid, all-family volunteer board rather than a staffed grantmaking operation. The foundation's own IRS filing describes its mission in boilerplate pass-through language: it 'is not involved in any direct charitable activities' and exists solely 'to support, by contributions, organizations exempt under IRC Sec. 501(c)(3).' Critically, the underlying database flags this foundation as preselected_only, and its application_instructions field is explicitly 'none' — this is a closed, relationship-driven funder, not one that reviews open submissions. Its grantee roster of 22 recent grants (totaling $150,000) is dominated by organizations within blocks of its own address — East 11th St Block Association, CPC Open Door Senior Center, Friends Seminary — plus a small number of alma-mater and cause-based gifts (University of Pennsylvania, World Central Kitchen, The Macula Foundation, Playwrights Horizons). This pattern is the signature of a personal/legacy giving vehicle: trustees direct funds to organizations they or their family are personally connected to (their block, their child's school, their disease-research interest), and grants renew for the same recipients year after year (CPC Open Door alone received 5 separate grants) rather than opening to a new applicant pool. First-time, unconnected applicants should not expect a formal LOI-to-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline here — there is no evidence one exists. The realistic path in is a warm introduction through an existing grantee, a shared institution (Penn alumni network, a NYC civic/block association, a Greenwich Village cultural or senior-service organization), or a personal connection to a Winkelman family member. Given total annual giving as low as $10,000-$150,000 depending on the year, this is not a foundation to approach for large capital campaigns — modest, specific, locally grounded asks in the $5,000-$25,000 range fit its actual giving pattern far better than an ambitious multi-year ask.

Across the 22 grants captured in the current sample, Spia Foundation distributed $150,000 total, averaging $6,818 per grant, with individual grants ranging from $5,000 (Playwrights Horizons Inc, one grant) up to $25,000 (a single grant to University of Pennsylvania, and $25,000 spread across 5 grants to CPC Open Door Senior Center). By cause area: Civic/community funding dominates at roughly $105,000 (70% of total) spread across CPC Open Door Senior Center ($25,000/5 grants), World Central Kitchen ($20,000/2 grants), Friends Seminary ($20,000/2 grants), E. 11th St Block Association ($15,000/3 grants), New York Yacht Club Foundation ($10,000/2 grants), East 11th St Block Association ($10,000/2 grants), and Playwrights Horizons ($5,000/1 grant). Educational funding accounts for about $35,000 (23%) via University of Pennsylvania ($25,000) and ReadWorks ($10,000). Medical research funding is the smallest slice at $10,000 (7%), entirely to The Macula Foundation Inc (macular disease research). Geographically, 19 of 22 grants stayed in New York, with 2 to DC-based organizations (likely World Central Kitchen) and 1 to Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania) — an overwhelmingly local, NYC-centric giving footprint. Looking at total annual payout over the 12 fiscal years on file: giving ran $95,484 (2011), $111,977 (2012), $57,536 (2013), $83,156 (2014), $188,897 (2015), then jumped to an outlier $1,054,310 (2019) before settling back to $33,910 (2020), $33,920 (2021), $28,930 (2022), and just $14,370 (2023) — the lowest year on record. Grants paid (a narrower cash-basis figure) followed the same arc: $46,000 to $118,000 in the 2011-2015 range, a one-time $1,050,000 in 2019, then a steady decline to $30,000, $30,000, $25,000, and only $10,000 by 2023. Total assets have fluctuated between roughly $2.0M and $3.9M with no sustained growth trend; FY2023's $3.78M reflects a rebound from $2.0M in 2022, driven by $994,653 in new contributions received that year rather than investment gains — suggesting the family may be replenishing the corpus after several thin-payout years.

No named peer foundations were returned for this profile in the underlying dataset, so the table below benchmarks Spia Foundation against general sector figures for private foundations of comparable scale, drawn from well-established philanthropic-sector reporting norms (IRS minimum distribution rules and Candid/Foundation Center aggregate data on small family foundations), rather than fabricated named organizations.

Spia Foundation's payout has run below the sector-typical $50,000-$250,000 band in most recent years (just $10,000-$30,000 in 2020-2023), and its 2023 giving of $14,370 sits well under even the IRS's minimum-distribution guidance relative to its ~$3.78M asset base, which is common among small family foundations mid-way through a multi-year contribution/rebuild cycle. Like most peer family foundations of this size, it operates without paid staff, without a public RFP, and gives almost exclusively to organizations with a direct personal or geographic tie to its trustees.

No foundation-specific news, press coverage, or announcements were found for Spia Foundation through web search — every query returned unrelated organizations that happen to share the 'SPIA' acronym (Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh SPIA, University of Georgia SPIA, CGIAR's Standing Panel on Impact Assessment, and the unrelated 'SIA Foundation' tied to Subaru of Indiana). The website on file for this foundation, spia.org, was checked directly and resolves to an entirely different organization — the Special People Inclusion Association, a Graz, Austria-based nonprofit — confirming Spia Foundation has no public website or online presence of its own; a /about path returned a 404. This absence of any digital footprint is itself informative: it is consistent with an unstaffed, all-volunteer family foundation that does not solicit public attention or applications. In the absence of press activity, the most recent verifiable activity is drawn from its own IRS Form 990 filings: FY2023 (the latest year on file) shows total assets of $3,779,820, total giving of just $14,370, and $10,000 in grants paid — its smallest payout year in the 12-year record reviewed — alongside $994,653 in new contributions received, which grew the asset base from $2.0M the prior year. The last notable spike in actual grantmaking activity was FY2019, when the foundation paid out $1,050,000 in grants, a nearly ten-times jump over any other year shown, most likely a single large one-time gift rather than a new giving level; payout reverted to the $25,000-$30,000 range immediately afterward and continued declining through 2023.

There is no public application process for this foundation to navigate — its own IRS filing lists application_instructions as literally 'none,' and the organization is flagged in charitable-sector data as accepting only preselected grantees. Do not expect an online portal, published LOI template, or posted deadline; none appears to exist. Given that, the realistic strategies for an organization hoping to be considered are relational rather than procedural: (1) Identify a genuine personal or institutional link to the Winkelman family trustees (Victoria Winkelman-Dedet, Colin F. Winkelman, Marius O. Winkelman, Dorinda P. Winkelman) or to Mark Winkelman, the foundation's listed contact — board membership overlap, alumni ties, or shared civic affiliations are the most plausible entry points. (2) Lean into geography: the foundation's address is 22 E 11th St in Greenwich Village, and its grant history shows a strong bias toward organizations in that immediate neighborhood (East 11th St Block Association, CPC Open Door Senior Center, Friends Seminary). A Manhattan civic, senior-services, or independent-school organization with a presence in that footprint has a much more plausible story than an out-of-area applicant. (3) Match the cause pattern: civic/neighborhood organizations, independent K-12 education, and targeted medical research (the foundation has funded macular disease research via The Macula Foundation) are its established interests — a proposal in an unrelated field (arts outside the civic-adjacent Playwrights Horizons pattern, environmental work, national advocacy) has no precedent in its giving history. (4) Size the ask realistically: grants have ranged $5,000-$25,000, and total annual payout was only $10,000-$30,000 in 2020-2023 — asking for anything approaching six figures is out of step with its recent capacity. (5) Common mistake to avoid: treating this like a program-officer-staffed institutional funder. With zero reported officer compensation across every year on file, there is no program staff to build a relationship with — outreach through a trustee or an existing grantee's board is far more likely to be read than a cold submission to a general inbox.