· Private foundation
Eric and Sheila Samson 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $241k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $479k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TARBUT VTORAH COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL | $1,000,000 |
| USC FOR UNIVERSITY GIFT ADVANCEMENT | $308,000 |
| TOGETHER WITH ISRAEL | $250,000 |
| CHABAD OF NORTH IRVINE | $136,764 |
| CONGREGATION OF ADAT YESHRUN | $90,851 |
| CHABAD STUDENT CENTER | $72,000 |
| BETH JACOB CONGREGATION OF IRVINE | $72,000 |
| WOW INC | $57,800 |
| H F EPSTEIN HEBREW ACADEMY | $50,000 |
| CHABAD OF IRVINE | $41,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $39,600 |
| CONG AGUDAS ACHIM JEWISH BURIAL | $36,000 |
| PLAZA SYNAGOGUE DBA YOUNG JEWISH PROFESSIONALS | $36,000 |
| IRVINE HEBREW DAY SCHOOL | $36,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $27,539 |
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 (FY24–25, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 19% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Eric and Sheila Samson 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 +8% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down; 7 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; $208k 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
- TVTARBUT V'TORAH COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL2× · 2024–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +8%
- TITOGETHERWITHISRAEL INC3× · 2023–2025 · $750k · revenue +160%
- COCONGREGATION OF ADAT YESHRUN3× · 2023–2025 · $716k
Funded once
- CCCLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $1.0M
- HHHOAG HOSPITAL FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $600k · revenue +40%
- CFCentral Fund of Israelgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $500k · revenue +31%
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 further jewish education in israel
Helping individuals and organizations with great needs and little resources and with often few options.
To provide medical support to families in need
To promote, benefit, and support Jewish religious, charitable & educational activities in Israel and the USA.
Friends of Jerusalem's mission is to provide assistance to the needs and indigent living in Jerusalem and all of Israel.
The organization provides financial assistance to victims of acts of terrorism in the state of israel.
Aleh Israel Foundation, Inc.(The Foundation)is a Foundation that provides support to rehabilitative centers caring for most severely disabled children in Israel.
To pursue a greater outreach of knowledge of the Jewish Torah and to further educate the less knowledgeable
American Friends of IDFWO is dedicated to providing financial, emotional, and social support to the families of Israeli soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in service. We aim to honor their legacy and help rebuild the lives of widows…
Support of tzohar-a school for special needs children located in israel
To support charitable organization and programs providing food, clothing and financial aid to indigent individuals and families in financial distress.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Community Foundation of Orange County and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Mishpacha Orphanage Odessa. 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 14 years old; the field is 14. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
17 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. 17 of the 36 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 TARBUT V'TORAH COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TOGETHERWITHISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds HOAG HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds TIKVA CORP ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MISHTERET YISRAEL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF CHAIYANU ↗
- Who funds IRVINE HEBREW DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OVERWATCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Orange County Friendship Circle Inc ↗
- Who funds ADOPT A FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT INSPIRE INC ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds VALLEY FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MISHPACHA ORPHANAGE ODESSA ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL MEDICAL FUND CORP ↗
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 Orange County · Jewish Community Foundation of Orange County · Jewish Communal Fund · Samueli Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Eric and Sheila Samson 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.