· Private foundation
Benedict Silverman Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $582k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE READING INSTITUTE | $2,010,000 |
| FUND FOR THE CITY OF NEW YORK | $200,000 |
| SOUTH ASIAN COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL SERVICES | $125,000 |
| ELIJAH'S PROMISE INC | $100,000 |
| IT TAKES A VILLAGE | $57,000 |
| RIVERSIDE CHURCH | $50,000 |
| CHALKBEAT | $50,000 |
| CANISIUS COLLEGE | $18,337 |
| GEORGIA GWINNETT COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC | $11,471 |
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 human-services grants (FY21–24, $640k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Benedict Silverman Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 87% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 63% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
13 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.0M 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
- RFResearch Foundation of the City University of New York2× · 2022–2023 · $2.0M · revenue +29%
- TCTeachers College Columbia University2× · 2018–2019 · $789k · revenue +11%
- SASOUTH ASIAN COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL SERVICES INC4× · 2021–2024 · $490k · revenue +69%
Funded once
- SFSUCCESS FOR ALL FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $300k · revenue +25%
- TCTEACHERS COLLEGE READING & WRITING PROJECTone grant, 2020 · $285k
- TFTHE FUND FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $185k · revenue +117%
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.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
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…
Fordham university, the jesuit university of new york, is committed to the discovery of wisdom and the transmission of learning, through research and through education of the highest quality. for more information, see schedule o.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
To provide excellence and access in private higher education to those who seek to expand their knowledge and prepare themselves for meaningful, educated lives and for service to their communities and the world.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Manhattan university is an independent catholic instituion of higher learning that embraces qualified men and women of all faiths, cultures, and traditions. the mission of manhattan university is to provide a contemporary, person-centered…
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…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Fund for Public Schools Inc and the most unlike its peers is It Takes a Village. 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 44 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 24% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 41 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 LITERACY TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds Research Foundation of the City University of New York ↗
- Who funds THE READING INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Teachers College Columbia University ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR THE CITY OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH ASIAN COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SUCCESS FOR ALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Elijahs Promise Inc ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKLYN COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds IT TAKES A VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HELP IN PARK SLOPE INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds RETHINK FOOD NYC INC ↗
- Who funds CIVIC NEWS COMPANY ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA GWINNETT COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CANISIUS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ONE GENERATION AWAY ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S TABLE INC ↗
- Who funds VOICES OF OUR CITY CHOIR INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON ART ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds PILOBOLUS INC ↗
- Who funds HUNTS POINT ALLIANCE FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds STEEP ROCK ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE GO PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL HAVEN 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: Robin Hood Foundation · The Wenden Foundation · The Kestrel Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Benedict Silverman Foundation 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.
- Steep Rock Association Inc — 19% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Washington Art Association Incorporated — 2% of income from government
- Elijahs Promise Inc — 1% of income from government
- Pilobolus Inc — 1% 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 Benedict Silverman Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Benedict Silverman Foundation 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.