· Private foundation
Colton 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
81% of Colton Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 25 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Colton Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 34 organizations, $6M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k41 grants · $123k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $127k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $200k
- $250k+6 grants · $5.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NYU LANGONE HEALTH | $1,100,860 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $1,002,881 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $1,000,000 |
| NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | $1,000,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIV | $1,000,000 |
| NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $265,000 |
| NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC | $100,000 |
| WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE | $50,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER METROW | $50,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS ISRAEL PHILHARMONI | $30,000 |
| LITTLE KIDS ROCK | $25,000 |
| ALLIANCE FOR DECISION EDUCATION | $25,000 |
| AMEINU | $20,000 |
| BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $16,958 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $59k) 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.
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.
66 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2022, 23 since wound down; 33 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER CORPORATION5× · 2020–2025 · $3.5M · revenue +21%- NJNEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA6× · 2020–2025 · $1.6M · revenue ×23 · 29% of their budget
- BSBOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $443k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- NYNew York Universitygraduatedone grant, 2021 · $1.1M · revenue +30%
- AEAMERICAN ENDOWMENT FUND - DAFone grant, 2020 · $500k
- ARAMERICAN RED CROSSone grant, 2021 · $100k
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 bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
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.
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…
Mjhs health system is a charitable not-for-profit established to support the activities of affiliated organizations. mjhs is built on the core values of compassion, dignity and respect, first established by the four brooklyn ladies in…
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.
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest Nj and the most unlike its peers is The Wallace Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
79 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. 79 of the 143 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 TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds American Friends of Tel Aviv Univ ↗
- Who funds NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NEW JERSEY ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT PUBLIC BROADCASTING INC ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER METROWEST NJ ↗
- Who funds Newark Community Street Team Inc ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR DECISION EDUCATIONINC ↗
- Who funds AMERICA GIVES INC ↗
- Who funds WNET ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WILL INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Housing Corporation of Metropolitan New Jersey ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds Community Food Bank Of New Jersey Inc ↗
- Who funds AMEINU OUR PEOPLE 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 Hyde and Watson Foundation · Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of New Jersey · The Prudential Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Pseg Foundation Inc · Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Metrowest NJ · Lvh Foundation · The Leon and Toby Cooperman Family Foundation · The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Inc · Victoria Foundation Inc · The McJ Amelior 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 Colton 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- 18 Degrees Inc — 60% of income from government
- Newark Community Street Team Inc — 38% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- New Jersey Symphony Orchestra — 21% of income from government
- Liberty Science Center — 14% of income from government
- Volunteer Lawyers for Justice in — 9% of income from government
- Brandeis University — 9% of income from government
- Paper Mill Playhouse — 9% of income from government
- The Morris Museum Inc — 7% of income from government
- Greenagers Inc — 7% of income from government
- Glassroots Inc — 5% of income from government
- Wam Theatre Inc — 4% of income from government
- Shelter Music Boston Inc — 4% of income from government
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% of income from government
- Jespy House Inc — 2% of income from government
- Branch Brook Park Alliance Inc — 2% of income from government
- Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- Simmons University — 1% of income from government
- Golda Och Academy — 0% of income from government
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc — 0% of income from government
- Jewish Community Housing Corporation of Metropolitan New Jersey — 0% of income from government
- New Jersey Performing Arts Center Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Rutgers University Foundation — 0% 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.