· Private foundation
Ira and Maryjo Sherman Family Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $63k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $109k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CONGREGATION HAR SHALOM | $58,536 |
| FRIENDS OF ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES | $50,000 |
| JUPITER MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $13,000 |
| INSIGHT THROUGH EDUCATION | $10,180 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY | $10,150 |
| PHILLIPS COLLECTION | $10,000 |
| SIBLEY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| KRAVIS CENTER FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA | $9,500 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $6,000 |
| HILLEL | $5,000 |
| BALLENISLES CHARITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ACTIVE MINDS | $2,000 |
| BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART | $1,650 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $40k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 4% 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 +48% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 5 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k 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
FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES6× · 2020–2025 · $110k · revenue +211%- JMJupiter Medical Center Foundation Inc5× · 2021–2025 · $87k · revenue +0%
- BCBALLENISLES CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC6× · 2019–2025 · $42k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- BFBREAD FOR THE CITY INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $7k · revenue +59%
- BIBALLEN ISLES CHARITY FUNDone grant, 2017 · $4k
- MOMEALS ON WHEELS INCone grant, 2020 · $4k · revenue -8%
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.
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
The weitzman national museum of american jewish history, on independence mall in philadelphia, presents educational programs and experiences that preserve, explore, and celebrate the history of jews in america. its purpose is to connect…
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Wegene Ethiopian 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 41 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) — 0% 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.
73 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. 73 of the 100 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 FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds BALLENISLES CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE MONTGOMERY COUNTY COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
- Who funds MANNA FOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds SO WHAT ELSE INC ↗
- Who funds Active Minds Inc ↗
- Who funds INSIGHT THROUGH EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds SIBLEY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds BREAD FOR THE CITY INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FOUNDATION FOR GROUP HOMES INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCY ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MPN RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds EDLAVITCH JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF WASHINGTON DC INC ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH GARDENS POLICE AND FIRE RESCUE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds WOLF TRAP FOUNDATION FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds University at Buffalo Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTON MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds HEBREW HOME OF GREATER WASHINGTON 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 Federation of Palm Beach County Inc · Greater Washington Community Foundation · Cynthia and Morton Zetlin Family Foundation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington Inc · United Way of Palm Beach County Inc · David L Lieb Foundation Inc · Robert I Schattner Foundation Inc aka Schattner Foundation · Children's Healthcare Charity Inc · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties Inc · Nora Roberts 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 Ira and Maryjo Sherman Family Foundation Inc 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.
- Nature Forward — 32% of income from government
- The Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless Inc — 19% of income from government
- Paper Mill Playhouse — 9% of income from government
- Baltimore Museum of Art — 4% of income from government
- University of Maryland Baltimore Foundation Inc — 3% of income from government
- Manna Food Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Jewish Social Service Agency — 1% of income from government
- Hebrew Home of Greater Washington Inc — 0% of income from government
- Place of Hope 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Ira and Maryjo Sherman Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Ira and Maryjo Sherman Family Foundation Inc 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.