· Public charity
Dan and Ellen Zelman Family Foundation
Further the charitable, educational and religious purposes of the jewish federation of cleveland ("federation").
Read this first · the figures below need context
64% of Dan and Ellen Zelman Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Jewish Federation Of Cleveland, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 17 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Dan and Ellen Zelman Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 18 organizations, $2M. 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 19 grants below total $1,689,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,817,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $127,500 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $144k
- $250k+5 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND | $492,000 |
| ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM INC | $262,500 |
| HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE | $262,500 |
| UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEMS INC | $250,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO | $26,500 |
| NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN INCORPORATED | $24,000 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $17,500 |
| JEWISH FAMILY EXPERIENCE | $12,000 |
| GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC | $12,000 |
| PARK SYNAGOGUE | $12,000 |
| MALTZ MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO | $10,000 |
| MENORAH PARK FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC | $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 (FY20–25, $109k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Dan and Ellen Zelman 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, 97% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 86% — 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 -29% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- JFJEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO8× · 2018–2025 · $707k · revenue +30%
- TRTHE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM INC8× · 2018–2025 · $443k · revenue +50%
- UHUNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INC7× · 2018–2024 · $370k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- FTFAIRMOUNT TEMPLE ANSHE CHESED CONGREGATIONone grant, 2018 · $50k
- USUNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT INCone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue -29%
- MPMENORAH PARK CENTER FOR SENIOR LIVINGone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue -94%
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 hebrew academy is to imbue all students with a love of god, torah and eretz yisroel and to prepare them to achieve excellence in torah and general knowledge based on successful cooperation among family, judaic and…
Caring for life, researching for health and educating those who serve.
The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati develops and connects leaders, contributors, organizations, and ideas to build an inclusive Jewish community that helps people in need, supports Israel, and assures a vibrant Jewish future.
The mission is to inspire transformative Jewish educational experiences that add meaning to the lives of Jewish children and their families in Cleveland. The vision of the agency is to instill a lifelong love of Jewish learning to further…
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…
A leading advocate for pluralism and diversity, clal offers jewish wisdom that enhances public life, deepens civic engagement and cultivates personal growth.
The Mt. Sinai Health Foundation improves the health of Greater Cleveland by investing resources, convening, and collaborating - with a focus on: - Equitable health outcomes- Health of the Jewish community- Academic medicine and bioscience…
The organization's mission is to manage a continuum of senior care business lines that consistently provide high-quality compassionate care while focusing on the development of innovative programs and services that enable individuals to…
We, mount carmel health system and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. mount carmel health system is a member of trinity health.
The Cleveland Orchestra inspires and enriches lives by creating extraordinary musical experiences at the highest level of artistic excellence.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Greater Cleveland and the most unlike its peers is Hillel Foundation at Miami University. 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.
30 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. 30 of the 33 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO ↗
- Who funds THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds Hillel Foundation at Miami University ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN - CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE NOW GREATER CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds FOUR COMMUNITY HILLEL HOUSE DBA HILLEL AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO ↗
- Who funds MENORAH PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland ↗
- Who funds MONTEFIORE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds ELEANOR B RAINEY MEMORIAL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds MENORAH PARK CENTER FOR SENIOR LIVING ↗
- Who funds STELLA MARIS INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND HILLEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
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 Cleveland · The Cleveland Foundation · Jack Joseph & Morton Mandel Foundation · Higley Fund of the Cleveland Foundation · David & Inez Myers Foundation · Woodruff Foundation · Murphy Family Foundation · United Way of Greater Cleveland · The Lozick Family Foundation · Akron Community Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable 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 Dan and Ellen Zelman 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.
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.