How much does Jewish Federation of Columbus give?

Jewish Federation of Columbus reported 32 itemized grants totaling $5,873,618, out of $9,243,187 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 12 and 22 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2024.

What does Jewish Federation of Columbus fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Human Services (37%), Religion (18%), Philanthropy (18%).

Who are Jewish Federation of Columbus's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: The Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus ($5.9M), Jewish Family Services ($3.8M), Wexner Heritage Village ($3.0M).

Does Jewish Federation of Columbus fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 18% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Jewish Federation of Columbus?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Columbus Jewish Foundation, Columbus Foundation, Jay and Jean Schottenstein Foundation.

Where is Jewish Federation of Columbus based?

Jewish Federation of Columbus is based in OH.

Jewish Federation of Columbus

Jewish Federation of Columbus at a glance Mostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Jewish Federation of Columbus

Make Jewish life vibrant, accessible and secure in Columbus, Israel and around the world.

$9.2M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$1.5M

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Human Services$11MReligion$5.3MPhilanthropy$5.2MEducation$3.1MInternational$2.1MHealth$2.0MPublic Benefit$377kYouth Development$60kOther$0

02FY2025 · 32 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured

The 32 grants below total $5,873,618, the rows itemized in this filing. The $9,243,187 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $3,369,569 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k4 grants · $29k
$10k–50k12 grants · $268k
$50k–250k7 grants · $699k
$250k+9 grants · $4.9M

$60,000

Median grant

States reached

$22M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Jewish Federations-North America	$1,476,148
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc	$819,000
Jewish Community Center Of Greater Columbus	$476,500
Jewish Agency For Israel-North American Council	$444,000
Wexner Heritage Village	$367,133
Friends Of The Israel Defense Forces	$330,000
Jewish Family Services	$322,500
Columbus Torah Academy	$322,000
Merkaz Hatzedaka Corp	$320,000
OSU Hillel	$153,979
American Friends Of ORR Shalom Inc	$128,000
Birthright Israel Foundation	$114,979
Ohio Jewish Communities	$99,848
Columbus Jewish Day School	$78,176
Columbus Community Kollel	$64,500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $3.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 15% of Jewish Federation of Columbus’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 70% of the giving stays in OH; by stated purpose, 66%.

Jewish Federation of Columbuslessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 6.4% directed abroad (not shown)

How this is measured

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 funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

93%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$22M · 25 repeat orgs$1.6M to everyone else

25 repeat relationships: 18 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$22M

$247k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+25%

+237%

Still filing today

56%

33%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.4M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

InternationalHuman ServicesEducationReligionHealthCivil RightsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

TJ
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF GREATER COLUMBUS
8× · 2017–2025 · $5.9M · revenue +110%
JF
JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES
8× · 2017–2025 · $3.8M · revenue +133%
WH
WEXNER HERITAGE VILLAGE
8× · 2017–2025 · $3.0M · revenue +16%

Funded once

IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2017 · $214k
GE
Gan Ephraim Incgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $32k · revenue +237%
LM
LITTLE MINYAN
one grant, 2019 · $1k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

Philanthropy

University of Judaism Foundation

—

Eastern European Jewish Heritage Foundation

Philanthropy

Bronfman Youth Fellowships to Israel in Inc

Youth Development

Sherit Isroel

—

Yeshiva Ohr Yisroel

Philanthropy

The Jewish Agency for Israel

The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…

—

Hebrew Academy of Cleveland

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…

—

Foundation for Conservative Judiasm of South Florida

—

Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary

To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…

Education

Connect Israel

Connect israel is a life-long program that aims to strengthen the gap between american jews and israelis through business, creative teamwork, and developing personal relationships.

International

JewishColumbus

Make Jewish life vibrant, accessible and secure in Columbus, Israel and around the world.

Religion

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus; the most unlike its peers is Camp Moshava of Wild Rose Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

27 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 27 of the 42 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

27/27

Grantees still filing

20/27

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$10,244,748Philanthropy$5,051,611Human Services$3,770,044Education$3,361,908Health$2,989,776International$2,128,304Civil Rights$1,321,016

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Columbus Jewish FoundationOH49.1× affinity21 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Columbus Jewish Foundation · Columbus Foundation · Jay and Jean Schottenstein Foundation · Nutis Foundation Inc · Lori Schottenstein Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · Saul Schottenstein Foundation D · Jewish Communal Fund · The Donald E & Eydie R Garlikov Family Foundation · Jon and Susan Diamond Family Foundation · Ann and Ari Deshe Foundation · Saul Schottenstein Foundation C

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Jewish Federation of Columbus funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Jewish Federation of Columbus. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

8report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Jewish Federation of Columbus’ filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home