· Private foundation
Felix and Ruth Gelber Foundation
Its FY2021 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
98% of Felix and Ruth Gelber Foundation’s FY2021 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2021 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year Felix and Ruth Gelber Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 17 organizations, $30k. 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 FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES | $5,500 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION OF OREGON | $3,750 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AM | $3,250 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $1,500 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK | $1,500 |
| LA COUNTY MUS OF ART | $1,300 |
| ACADEMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| HEAL THE OCEAN | $1,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $1,000 |
| AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA | $1,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART | $500 |
| HAMMER MUSEUM | $500 |
| OXFAM AMERICA | $500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 40% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
25 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2019, 2 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, 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 FY2021, 21% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC3× · 2017–2019 · $10k · revenue +12%- TLTHE LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES5× · 2017–2021 · $10k · revenue +16%
- WCWILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC3× · 2017–2019 · $5k · revenue +302%
Funded once
- LALOS ANGELES BALLET INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +85%
- AFACLU FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFONone grant, 2018 · $2k
- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INCone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue +10%
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 ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
The los angeles conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of los angeles county.
Chamber's mission: design and advance opportunities and solutions for a thriving regional economy that are inclusive and globally competitive. 1) advocacy - be a bold advocate for business as a driver of a strong economy that enables…
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The asian art museum celebrates, preserves, and promotes asian and asian american art and cultures for local and global audiences. we provide a dynamic forum for exchanging ideas, inviting collaboration, and fueling imagination to deepen…
Finance impacts everyone. as a socially relevant organization, the museum of american finance seeks to improve understanding of the influence of financial institutions and capital markets on the u.s. and global economies, and on…
The trust for public land creates parks and protects land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. in the past year, we helped communities to plan for parks and conservation, fund parks and conservation,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc and the most unlike its peers is Academy Museum Foundation. 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 37 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
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 37 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon Inc ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE OCEAN INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INC ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC CITIZEN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds WESTSIDE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM OF ART AND CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY OF OREGON ↗
- Who funds BARK ↗
- Who funds THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ROSE HAVEN CIC ↗
- Who funds Montecito Community Foundation ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Felix and Ruth Gelber 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Bark — 2% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Portland Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Oxfam-America Inc — 0% 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.