· Private foundation
Dennis and Joyce Ruben Foundation
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $99,872 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $244,614 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $144,742 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 · FY2022
- Under $10k10 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $76k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Chicago Center of Torah & Chesed | $37,400 |
| Chicago Chesed Fund | $21,000 |
| The Chicago Center | $18,000 |
| American Friends of N.A. | $6,000 |
| JDBY | $5,180 |
| American Friends of Bnei Levy | $5,000 |
| Arie Crown Hebrew Day School | $3,600 |
| Friendship Circle of MB | $1,800 |
| Sharsheret | $1,000 |
| Jewish Sacred Society | $360 |
| Lubavitch Chabad of Skokie | $360 |
| Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation | $100 |
| Hebrew Academy For Special Children | $72 |
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 (FY17–21, $65k) 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.
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 +79% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2022, 45 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- CCCHICAGO CHESED FUND5× · 2017–2021 · $62k · revenue +87%
- KKESHET2× · 2019–2021 · $31k · revenue +44%
- CLCHAI LIFELINE INC5× · 2017–2021 · $11k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- CKCONGREGATION KEHILAS YAAKOVone grant, 2021 · $20k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $18k
- CACONG ATERES ELIEZER IF BISCADone grant, 2021 · $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.
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
The jewish federation of greater atlanta cares for, connects and strengthens our jewish community throughout greater atlanta, israel and the world.
To ignite jewish passion and empower every jew to embrace their heritage, thereby ensuring the vibrant continuity of the jewish epople.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Netiv Aryeh Inc and the most unlike its peers is Delegation of Jewish American Students (Dojas). 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 34 years old; the field is 16. 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 — 2% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 202 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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.
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 Metropolitan Chicago · Bitton Family Foundation Inc · Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation · Todd a and Raphaela Stern Family Foundation · Elliott and Ronni Charitable Fdn · Jewish Communal Fund · Bellows Family Foundation · Daniel & Chayala Glenner Foundation · Sidney and Lisa Glenner Foundation · Noah Wolff Family Foundation Inc · Lev Zahav NFP · Alice G Hanson Family 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 Dennis and Joyce Ruben 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.