· Private foundation
Bernard and Sandra Otterman 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $37k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $290k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC | $75,000 |
| NEW ISRAEL FUND | $60,000 |
| POLLINATE GROUP | $54,848 |
| CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST INC | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR CIVILIANS IN CONFLICT | $50,000 |
| MJR LOVE INC | $22,000 |
| OLIGO NATION | $15,000 |
| HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY | $9,891 |
| NEO PHILANTHROPY INC | $5,250 |
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 (FY19–25, $194k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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 12% of Bernard and Sandra Otterman 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.
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 +21% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 2 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $37k 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
- FHFACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC4× · 2022–2025 · $275k · revenue +0%
- CFCENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST INC7× · 2019–2025 · $201k · revenue +13% · 67% of their budget
- CFCENTER FOR CIVILIANS IN CONFLICT6× · 2019–2025 · $190k · revenue +0%
Funded once
- UOUniversity of the Middle Eastone grant, 2018 · $60k
- ACAMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INCone grant, 2018 · $35k · revenue -82%
- IEIsrael Endownment Funds Incone grant, 2018 · $24k
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.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Crisis group works to prevent and resolve deadly conflict around the world by informing and influencing the perceptions and actions of policymakers and other key conflict actors. to this end, we endeavour to talk to all sides and provide…
We generate ideas, produce evidence, and design solutions to improve the lives of underserved populations around the world. we take a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, life-cycle approach that contributes to (see schedule o)four global…
Rri's mission is to support local communities and indigenous peoples' struggles against poverty and marginalization by promoting greater global commitment and action towards policy, market, and legal reforms that secure their rights to…
The international institute on race, equality and human rights contributes to the promotion and defense of human rights, through training, technical assistance, advocacy, and strategic litigation conducted at the regional and international…
The organization's mission is to engage in non partisan analysis of u.s. foreign policy in the middle east, with special emphasis on the middle east peace process, and to present policymakers in the united states, in the region and in the…
Eastwest institute (ewi) works to reduce international conflict, addressing seemingly intractable problems that threaten world security and stability. (continued on schedule o)
The council on foreign relations (cfr) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
The we are family foundation celebrates the vision of a global family by creating and supporting programs that inspire and educate people about mutual respect, understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Blacksmith Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Kratt Brothers Creature Hero Society. 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 32 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 53 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 FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CIVILIANS IN CONFLICT ↗
- Who funds NEW ISRAEL FUND ↗
- Who funds POLLINATE GROUP ↗
- Who funds COLLABORATIVE FOR ACADEMIC SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING ↗
- Who funds HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds MJR LOVE INC ↗
- Who funds TRANS FORMATIVE SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds PLOUGHSHARES FUND INC ↗
- Who funds OLIGO NATION ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF AMAL-TIKVA INC ↗
- Who funds TREVOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SUNNYSIDE COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND CHANCE INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds CITY PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NADIA'S INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds BY ALL MEANS LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Partnership With Native Americans ↗
- Who funds KRATT BROTHERS CREATURE HERO SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK STATE YOUTH LEADERSHIP COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds KIND INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S REFUGEE COMMISSION 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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Paypal Charitable Giving 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 Bernard and Sandra Otterman 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Peace and Justice Center — 41% of income from government
- Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Inc — 4% 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 Bernard and Sandra Otterman Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bernard and Sandra Otterman 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.