· Private foundation
Edward and Norma Jean Meer Charitable 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 94% of EDWARD AND NORMA JEAN MEER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k67 grants · $158k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $364k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $311k
- $250k+1 grant · $419k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WOODWARD AVENUE SHUL | $419,000 |
| BAIS REFEOL FOUNDATION | $234,000 |
| YESHIVA GEDOLAH LOAN FUND | $76,800 |
| YESHIVA DARCHEI TORAH | $36,200 |
| TZEDKAH ENHANCEMENT PROJECT | $36,000 |
| KOLLEL INSTITUTE OF GREATER DETROIT | $30,800 |
| YESHIVA BETH YEHUDAH | $26,600 |
| CHEDER LUBAVITCH | $25,300 |
| RABBINCAL COLLEGE OF AMERICA | $24,000 |
| THE SPOT FOR CHILDREN & S | $20,600 |
| YESHIVAS LUBAVITCH OF BALTIMORE | $20,000 |
| YESHIVA GEDOLAH FREE LOAN ACCOUNT | $18,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $17,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,700 |
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 (FY21–25, $82k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 0% since the first grant, against -20% for the ones you funded once.
108 repeat relationships — 67 still active in FY2025, 41 since wound down; 21 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $117k 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 SERVICE4× · 2021–2025 · $57k · revenue +57%
- DCDETROIT CHESED PROJECT5× · 2021–2025 · $20k · revenue +166%
- JHJEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION3× · 2021–2023 · $13k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- YGYESHIVA GEDOLA HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2021 · $100k
- FOFriends of Beis Chana Tzfas Incone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +1%
- YGYESHIVA GEDOLAH COM FUNDone grant, 2022 · $18k
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.
Religious Teaching
Support of religious schools in Israel
To foster jewish religious education and disseminate the teachings of rabbi nachman of breslov through publication and distribution of books and cds, as well as seminars, lectures and study groups.
To further jewish education in israel
To support religious, charitable, scientific, literary and/or educational programs
Religious School
The organization will provide financial assistance to educational institutions that promote the observance of the jewish religion, its laws and traditions, and sacred texts, including yeshivat nachalat yossef, located in jerusalem, israel.
Ohr Yisrael is a religious institution that provides religious services and instruction to Rabbis and community members.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Family Service and the most unlike its peers is The Colt Trust Inc. 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 31 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 11% 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, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 45 of the 204 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: The Meer Family Foundation · Ahavas Avraham Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · Borsand Family Foundation Inc · Jewish Federation of Detroit · Jewish Communal Fund · The Irving and Ethel Palman Foundation · The Bruce H and Rosalie N Rosen Family Foundation · Pappas Foundation Inc · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Ojc Fund · Marvin Berlin 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 Edward and Norma Jean Meer Charitable 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.
- Mesorah Heritage Foundation — 1% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Edward and Norma Jean Meer Charitable 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.