· Private foundation
Berman Charitable Trust
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
- Under $10k3 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $330k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AISH HATORAH | $150,000 |
| MELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY | $105,000 |
| ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE | $75,000 |
| YESHIVA OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $25,000 |
| YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH | $25,000 |
| ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $20,000 |
| NER ISRAEL RABBINICAL COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| YESHIVA BETH ABRAHAM OF JERUSALEM | $1,000 |
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 (FY18–18, $100) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, 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.
23 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MJMELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY7× · 2018–2024 · $644k · revenue +67%
- YOYESHIVA OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC7× · 2018–2024 · $175k · revenue +28%
- ALANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE7× · 2018–2024 · $140k · revenue +80%
Funded once
- NANCSY - ATLANTIC SEABOARDone grant, 2018 · $25k
- YYYAD YEHUDA OF GREATER WASHINGTON INCone grant, 2020 · $15k
- YHYESHIVA HIGH SCHOOL OF GREATER WASHINGTONone grant, 2019 · $10k
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.
Religious School
To further jewish education in israel
To promote, benefit, and support Jewish religious, charitable & educational activities in Israel and the USA.
To promote and support jewish religious charitable and educational activities in israel & usa.
To support religious, charitable, scientific, literary and/or educational programs
Furtherance of jewish education
To promote, benefit, and support jewish educational activities in israel
Promoting study of Mishnah and other Jewish texts
To provide grants to jewish religious organization in need.
To pursue a greater outreach of knowledge of the Jewish Torah and to further educate the less knowledgeable
To provide support to jewish religious education in israel and around the world, and provide financial assistance to and on behalf of yeshivah beth israel tifereth menachem.
To promote, assist, and sponsor the spreading of Jewish religious education in Israel. The organization will also organize inspirational gatherings in the USA to enhance the participants' Torah knowledge.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Meir Panim and the most unlike its peers is Allegheny Mountain Institute. 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 27 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 69 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 ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds YESHIVA OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds YESHIVA BETH ABRAHAM OF JERUSALEM INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ALYN HOSPITALINC ↗
- Who funds MESORAH INC ↗
- Who funds BIKUR CHOLIM OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds SUNFLOWER BAKERY INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Washington Jewish Coalition Contd ↗
- Who funds Shoresh 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: The Dennis Berman Family Foundation Inc · Brian and Dafna Berman Family Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Mayberg Foundation Inc · The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington Inc · The Ojc Fund · The Gary & Carol Berman Family Foundation Inc · Associated Jewish Charities of Baltimore · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc · Leslie & Samuel Kaplan Family Foundation · Gutman Family Foundation 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 Berman Charitable Trust 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.
- Greater Washington Jewish Coalition Contd — 28% of income from government
- Melvin J Berman Hebrew Academy — 2% of income from government
- Yeshiva of Greater Washington 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 Berman Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Berman Charitable 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.