· Private foundation
Berger Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $48k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EISENHOWER HEALTH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE DESERT | $50,000 |
| RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL | $20,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| EISENHOWER MEDICAL CENTER | $12,500 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE A | $5,000 |
| PALM SPRINGS AIR MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| DESERT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO POLICE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $3,500 |
| TRUSTEES OF TUFTS COLLEGE | $3,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE IDF | $3,000 |
| FOOD ON FOOT | $2,500 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC | $2,500 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $2,000 |
| THE MAPLE COUNSELING CENTER | $1,500 |
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 (FY20–25, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 Berger Family 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, 68% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 65% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
- EMEisenhower Medical Center4× · 2020–2025 · $282k · revenue +66%
- RMRANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL3× · 2022–2025 · $55k · revenue +888%
- TLTHE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO4× · 2021–2024 · $40k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- RMRANCHO MIRAGE LIBRARYone grant, 2023 · $5k
- PSPALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUMone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +9%
- HCHATZALAH CHICAGOone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue -2%
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 central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
The mission of southern california university of health sciences (scu) is to educate students as competent, caring and successful practitioners of integrative healthcare. the university is committed to providing excellence in academics,…
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Birthright Israel Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Hatzalah Chicago. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 41 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 14% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 46 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 Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM SPRINGS AND DESERT AREA ↗
- Who funds RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds THE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds DESERT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds College of the Desert Foundation ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO POLICE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES SHERIFFS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHAPEL HILL-CHAUNCY HALL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS AIR MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds HILLCREST COUNTRY CLUB CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HATZALAH CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds DIGESTIVE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BELOVED ASHEVILLE ↗
- Who funds FOOD ON FOOT ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MAPLE COUNSELING CENTER ↗
- Who funds DESERT ARC ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
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 Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Galen Family Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Harriet K and Howard N Bernstein Charitable Foundation · Victor Family Foundation co Jonathan Victor · The Hyman and Mintz Family Foundation · David & Janet Polak Foundation · The Auen Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Jarvis Foundation · HN and Frances C Berger Foundation · Leichtag Foundation
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 Berger Family 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 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 Berger Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Berger Family 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.