· Private foundation
David & Janet Polak Foundation
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k33 grants · $163k
- $10k–50k30 grants · $520k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICANS FOR BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY INC | $250,000 |
| STANDWITHUS | $200,000 |
| FRIENDS OF ELNET | $150,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION COUNCIL OF GREATER LOS ANGELES | $110,000 |
| CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER | $100,000 |
| THE JEWISH INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY OF AMER | $100,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES | $100,000 |
| SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER INC | $61,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $60,000 |
| MOISHE HOUSE | $60,000 |
| AMERICANS FOR BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY INC | $56,000 |
| PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TECHNION- ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF | $50,000 |
| TURNING POINT USA INC | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES | $50,000 |
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 (FY20–20, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 15% of David & Janet Polak 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 +47% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 59 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k 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
- AFAMERICANS FOR BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY INC5× · 2020–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +104%
- IEISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE5× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +52%
CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER5× · 2020–2024 · $641k · revenue +55%
Funded once
- RIREPORT INC-RESEARCHEVALUATIONPROMOTING ORG RESPone grant, 2021 · $50k
- RERESEARCH - EVAL - PROMOTING ORG RESPON & TRANSPARENCY - REPORT - INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +129%
- TJTHE JEWISH HOME AND SENIOR LIVING FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -12%
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 israel institute, inc. (the institute) enhances knowledge about modern israel by ensuring that more students have access to courses about israel during their time on campus.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
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…
The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
We fundraise in the u.s. to support, and raise awareness of, bar-ilan university in israel.
Support the hebrew univ. of jerusalem, israel's foremost center of higher edu. & research.
To create an informed, celebratory and satisfying jewish community for students at the university of southern california, to deepen jewish identity through social, intellectual and spiritual participation, to offer diversified…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The shalom hartman institute (shi) is a leading research and educational center serving israel and world jewry. we work to enrich the moral and spiritual life of israel and the jewish people, deepen the commitment to pluralism and israel's…
To strengthen and expand the u.s.-israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the united states and israel.
Yivo's mission is to study the thousand-year history of jewish life in eastern europe and russia in all its aspects: language, history, religion, folkways and material culture. yivo's archive and library preserves a significant collection…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Funders Network and the most unlike its peers is Pacific Legal 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 33 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
87 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. 87 of the 97 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 AMERICANS FOR BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TECHNION ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION COUNCIL OF GREATER LA ↗
- Who funds CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds JEWISH INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ELNET ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TRIBE MEDIA CORP ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds MOISHE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE AYN RAND INSTITUTE THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF OBJECTIVISM ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST FORUM ↗
- Who funds Barak Ballet Corporation ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND INC ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES JEWISH HOME FOR THE AGING ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ISRAELI NAVY SEALS INC ↗
- Who funds AMCHA Initiative ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE LAWFARE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PROCLAIMING JUSTICE TO THE NATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds ENDOWMENT FOR MIDDLE EAST TRUTH ↗
- Who funds DAVID HOROWITZ FREEDOM CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING IN AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF SHEBA MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds OPENDOR MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds RESEARCH - EVAL - PROMOTING ORG RESPON & TRANSPARENCY - REPORT - INC ↗
- Who funds THE BUCKLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST MEDIA AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds HONESTREPORTINGCOM 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: Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · The Milstein Family Foundation · Hochberg Family Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · California Community Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · The Snider Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · The Sandra & Lawrence Post Family Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management 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 David & Janet Polak 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% 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 David & Janet Polak Foundation?
Find your warmest path to David & Janet Polak 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.