· Private foundation
Benjamin and Susan Shapell Foundation Inc
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
63% of Benjamin and Susan Shapell Foundation Inc’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Pef Israel Endowment Funds Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $42k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUND | $31,500 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAYANOTMAYANOT INSTITUTE OF JEWISH STUDIES | $10,000 |
| JEWISH OUTREACH CENTEROHEL ARI FUND | $5,000 |
| GIVING GROUP COMMUNITY (A PARTNER OF SUNFLOWERS) | $3,600 |
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 (FY21–21, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +101% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 2 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, 27% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
- LTLIVING TORAH CENTER2× · 2020–2022 · $41k
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MATAN INC2× · 2020–2021 · $36k · revenue +42%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAYANOT3× · 2020–2022 · $31k
Funded once
- OIONE ISRAEL FUND LTDgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $12k · revenue +228%
- LDLIFE'S DOOR INCone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -33%
FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCESgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +110%
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 mission of the american friends of the u.s.-israel binational science foundation (afbsf) is to ensure the continuation of collaborative world-class scientific research by israeli and american scientists through the us israel binational…
To raise and distribute funds for charitable organizations with the goal to strengthen the jewish and zionist spirit of the state of israel.
To create, form, and establish an organization to address the growing educational and cultural crises in israel, as well as the negative stereotyping and widening gulf between secular and religious jews in israel. to address the lack of…
The organization seeks to reinforce the foundations of israel as a jewish and democratic state. it acts to promote programs to educate the israeli public on the importance of both values and to demonstrate how each contributes to and…
To strengthen israel's future in these areas: 1)providing new immigrants with assistance in a few key areas: representing them as they navigate government ministries and assisting them with their challenges as new immigrants to israel.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is One Israel Fund Ltd and the most unlike its peers is University of Southern California. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 20 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 PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MATAN INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds ONE ISRAEL FUND LTD ↗
- Who funds LIFE'S DOOR INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds THE GESHER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BEIT ISSIE SHAPIRO INC ↗
- Who funds 2048 THE SECOND CENTURY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF PANIM EL PANIM 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: Jewish Communal Fund · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Benjamin and Susan Shapell 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.
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Find your warmest path to Benjamin and Susan Shapell 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.