How much does American Chai Trust give?

American Chai Trust reported 11 grants totaling $91,000 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 10 and 35 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does American Chai Trust fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (40%), Education (15%), Food & Nutrition (9%).

Who are American Chai Trust's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: New Museum of Contemporary Art ($97k), The American Federation of Arts Inc ($40k), Lunch Break Inc ($39k).

Does American Chai Trust fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 35% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does American Chai Trust accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as American Chai Trust?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The Hyde and Watson Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The Ford Foundation.

Where is American Chai Trust based?

American Chai Trust is based in NY.

American Chai Trust

American Chai Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

American Chai Trust

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$91k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$21k

Largest

01What it funds

0192% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$360kEducation$138kFood & Nutrition$83kHuman Services$64kInternational$34kHealth$34kYouth Development$26kCrime & Legal$21kOther$0

02FY2025 · 11 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k6 grants · $23k
$10k–50k5 grants · $69k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$613k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Individual grant recipient	$21,000
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS	$15,000
HUNTER COLLEGE	$12,500
NEW MUSEUM	$10,000
SAY - STUTTERING ASSOCIATION FOR THE YOUNG	$10,000
Individual grant recipient	$5,000
INTERNATIONAL PEACE INSTITUTE	$5,000
NEW SCHOOL (VERA LIST CENTER)	$5,000
CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY	$3,000
BROOKLYN ACACEMY OF MUSIC	$3,000
EAST SIDE HOUSE SETTLEMENT	$1,500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–22, $35k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

74%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$665k · 45 repeat orgs$233k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +42% since the first grant, against +15% for those funded once.

45 repeat relationships: 8 still active in FY2025, 37 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$665k

$202k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+42%

+15%

Still filing today

67%

49%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $31k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureEducationHuman ServicesCrime & LegalFood & NutritionInternationalOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

NM
New Museum of Contemporary Art
9× · 2017–2025 · $97k · revenue +6%
TA
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS INC
4× · 2022–2025 · $40k · revenue +58%
LUNCH BREAK INC
7× · 2017–2024 · $39k · revenue +251%

Funded once

BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
one grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +15%
AF
AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE JEWISH CAMPUS BERLIN INC
one grant, 2022 · $7k · revenue -92%
TV
THE VERA LIST CENTER FOR ART AND POLITICS
one grant, 2024 · $7k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Museum of the City of New York

The museum of the city of new york fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world's most influential metropolis. it engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city's past, present, and…

Arts & Culture

The Neue Galerie New York

Arts & Culture

The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences

The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).

Arts & Culture

The Jewish Museum

The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.

Arts & Culture

New York City Center Inc

The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…

Arts & Culture

New York Studio School

The new york studio school is committed to giving a significant education to the aspiring artist, a preamble to a lifetime's engagement in drawing, painting, and sculpture. (see schedule o for continuation)

—

Berggruen Institute

Education

Performance Space 122 Inc

See schedule operformance space new york is committed to promoting the arts (including performance, visual and all other contemporary arts), fostering artistic development (including through direct grants), advancing diversity in the field…

Arts & Culture

New York Foundation for the Arts Inc

Established in 1971, the mission of the new york foundation for the arts (nyfa) is to empower artists in all disciplines, as well as cultural workers, to achieve success on their own terms by providing critical support, resources, and…

Arts & Culture

The Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association

For over 150 years, the 92nd street y, new york has been serving its communities and the larger world by bringing people together (continued on schedule o)and providing exceptional, groundbreaking programs in the performing and visual…

Religion

New York Botanical Garden

The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…

Environment

New York School of Interior Design

New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Expanded Schools Inc; the most unlike its peers is Rosey's Rescue Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

67 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 67 of the 120 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

65/67

Grantees still filing

46/67

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$477,503Arts & Culture$218,800Education$60,500Food & Nutrition$46,500Human Services$34,500Crime & Legal$31,000International$29,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

The Hyde and Watson FoundationNJ28.1× affinity12 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Hyde and Watson Foundation · The New York Community Trust · The Ford Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation · Pinkerton Foundation · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Donald a Pels Charitable Trust Utd 8/18/92 C/O Pkf O'Connor Davies · Booth Ferris Foundation Xxxxx4008 · The Warburg Pincus Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Roy & Niuta Titus Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization American Chai Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from American Chai Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

21report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to American Chai Trust?

Find your warmest path to American Chai Trust 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.

Play a game based on American Chai’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home