· Private foundation
James and Susan Ratner Family 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k42 grants · $123k
- $10k–50k25 grants · $494k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $160k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF CLEVELAND | $250,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $100,000 |
| PARK SYNAGOGUE | $60,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND | $35,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND | $30,938 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE FOUNDATION | $28,500 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $25,000 |
| J STREET EDUCATION FUND | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY CIRCLE INC | $25,000 |
| PARK SYNAGOGUE | $25,000 |
| HEALTH EQUITY FUND OF GREATER OHIO | $25,000 |
| NEW ISRAEL FUND | $25,000 |
| MUSICAL ARTS ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
| MQ FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE FOUNDATION | $22,000 |
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, $82k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 21% 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 +20% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
85 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2025, 44 since wound down; 11 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $114k 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
- CMCLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART6× · 2019–2025 · $550k · revenue +32%
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY6× · 2019–2025 · $470k · revenue +43%- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO8× · 2017–2024 · $251k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- AEANSHE EMETH BETH TEFILO CONGREGATIONone grant, 2020 · $100k
- IINMOTIONone grant, 2020 · $40k · revenue -21%
- OPOhio Progressive Collaborative Education Fundone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue -59%
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 mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The mission of the hebrew academy is to imbue all students with a love of god, torah and eretz yisroel and to prepare them to achieve excellence in torah and general knowledge based on successful cooperation among family, judaic and…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The organization's mission is to engage in non partisan analysis of u.s. foreign policy in the middle east, with special emphasis on the middle east peace process, and to present policymakers in the united states, in the region and in the…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The museum of jewish heritage - a living memorial to the holocaust is new york's contribution to the global responsibility to never forget. see schedule o for additional information.
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The United Jewish Cemeteries. 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 44 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
118 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. 118 of the 143 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO ↗
- Who funds Playhouse Square Foundation ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds The Musical Arts Association ↗
- Who funds NEW ISRAEL FUND ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM OF ART AND CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds J STREET EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDWISH MEDWORKS ↗
- Who funds HT Ministries ↗
- Who funds PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds HANNA PERKINS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SLAVIC VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BEZALEL ACADEMY OF ARTS AND DESIGNS INC ↗
- Who funds MILESTONES AUTISM RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds INMOTION ↗
- Who funds MOBILEMED1 INC DBA MEDWORKS ↗
- Who funds PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds ROSA VERA FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE ULI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ohio Progressive Collaborative Education Fund ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY CIRCLE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds WORLD ZIONIST ORGANIZATION - AMERICAN SECTION 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 Cleveland · The Cleveland Foundation · The Horowitz Ratner Family Foundation · Ronald and Deborah Ratner Family Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · The Albert B & Audrey G Ratner Family Foundation · Jack Joseph & Morton Mandel Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · The Good Community Foundation · Third Federal Foundation · Greenleaf Avenue Foundation · Emma R Fox Char Trust Mut Fds
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 James and Susan Ratner Family 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% 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 James and Susan Ratner Family 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.