· Private foundation
Ben & Estelle Sommers Foundation Inc
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE | $2,007 |
| JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE | $1,410 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $1,200 |
| LINCOLN CENTER THEATRE | $406 |
| TEMPLE EMANUEL STREICKER CENTER | $360 |
| CITY CENTER ENCORES | $285 |
| UNTERMYER GARDENS CONSERVANCY | $200 |
| MUSEUM OF MODERN ART | $198 |
| UNITED HATZALAH | $180 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM | $180 |
| METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART | $175 |
| NEW YORK CITY BALLET | $119 |
| LINCOLN CENTER DANCE AGAINST CANCER | $103 |
| KING BAUDOUIN FOUNDATION | $100 |
| AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL | $100 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 79% 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
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.
34 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2023, 18 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $970 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
- JPJACOB'S PILLOW DANCE FESTIVAL INC7× · 2017–2023 · $7k · revenue +95%
- NYNEW YORK CITY BALLET INC6× · 2017–2023 · $3k · revenue +21%
- FUFordham University2× · 2017–2018 · $800 · revenue +47%
Funded once
- RFRAMAPO FOR CHILDREN INCone grant, 2018 · $1k · revenue -13%
- JFJOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $451 · revenue +55%
- WPWESTON PLAYHOUSEone grant, 2017 · $421
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 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…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
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).
Presenting, commissioning, performing, recording and teaching contemporary music. bang on a can believes in exposing exciting new music as broadly and accessibly as possible. through it's summer institute, bang on a can hopes to bring this…
El museo's mission is to preserve, interpret, and promote the artistic heritage of puerto ricans and all latin americans in the united states by means of exhibitions, public programs, publications, and educational activities.
Munson-williams-proctor arts institute (mwpai) is a fine arts center dedicated to serving diverse audiences by advancing the appreciation, understanding, and enjoyment of the arts. the art institute aims to promote interest and…
A center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists since 1977, which continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
The philadelphia museum of art - in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe - seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collection in particular, and the visual arts in…
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Philharmonic Symphony Society of Ny Inc and the most unlike its peers is Brant Lake Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 48 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 106 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 JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds JESSICA LANG DANCE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds RAMAPO FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Fordham University ↗
- Who funds Museum of Modern Art ↗
- Who funds THE WESTON PLAYHOUSE THEATER ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds Marlboro School of Music Inc ↗
- Who funds UNTERMYER GARDENS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds BALLET THEATRE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HILDENE INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE A LIVING MEMORIAL TO THE HOLOCAUST ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds THEATRE DEVELOPMENT FUND INC ↗
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: Ibm International Foundation · Vermont Council on the Arts Inc · The Shubert Foundation Inc · The Enoch Foundation · The Harkness Foundation for Dance Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Howard Gilman Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Ben & Estelle Sommers Foundation Inc 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.
- Christopher Reeve Foundation — 49% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Weston Playhouse Theater — 0% of income from government
- Tampa Museum of Art Inc — 0% 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 Ben & Estelle Sommers Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Ben & Estelle Sommers Foundation Inc 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.