· Public charity
Jewish Federation of Madison Inc
To inspire, build, and sustain vibrant jewish life by fostering diverse opportunities to connect at every age and mobilizing our community in common purpose, in madison, israel, and around the world.
Read this first · the figures below need context
70% of Jewish Federation of Madison Inc’s FY2025 grant dollars went to The Jewish Federations Of North America Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 6 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 8 grants below total $472,180 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $517,956 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $45,776 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $58k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $61k
- $250k+1 grant · $321k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA | $321,411 |
| JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICES | $60,800 |
| HILLEL FOUNDATION - UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN | $38,000 |
| WISCONSIN FAITH VOICES FOR JUSTICE | $20,000 |
| UW CHABAD HOUSE | $8,775 |
| WISCONSIN JEWISH CONFERENCE | $8,550 |
| BETH ISRAEL CENTER | $8,200 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON EVALUATION COLLABORATIVE | $6,444 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 66% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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.
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 66% of Jewish Federation of Madison Inc’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 +78% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 1 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- JSJEWISH SOCIAL SERVICES OF MADISON INC9× · 2017–2025 · $587k · revenue +256%
- HFHILLEL FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN INC9× · 2017–2025 · $381k · revenue +172%
- CACHABAD AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN INC5× · 2021–2025 · $40k · revenue +99%
Funded once
BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF DANE COUNTY INCone grant, 2021 · $35k · revenue -28%- CFCENTER FOR COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIPone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -22%
- LNLITERACY NETWORK INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +69%
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 inspire, build, and sustain vibrant jewish life by fostering diverse opportunities to connect at every age and mobilizing our community in common purpose, in madison, israel, and around the world.
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
Juf provides critical resources that bring food, refuge, health care, education and emergency assistance to over 500,000 chicagoans of all faiths and millions of jews in israel and around the world, funding a network of 100+ agencies,…
To promote and educate the general public regarding the jewish religion and culture and to provide services to jewish college students through various relevant programs
Uja-federation of new york (uja) cares for jews everywhere and new yorkers of all backgrounds, responds to crises close to home and far away, and shapes the jewish future. through strategic grantmaking, uja provides funding and resources…
The mission of Iowa Hillel is to enhance the lives of Jewish students at the University of Iowa, so they may enrich the Jewish people and the world. Iowa Hillel envisions a world for our students where they find a community here at Iowa…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Social Services of Madison Inc and the most unlike its peers is Jason Terry Foundation Inc. 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 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 15% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 25 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 THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICES OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds HILLEL FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE JEWISH FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN FAITH VOICES FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds CHABAD AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF DANE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF DANE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP ↗
- Who funds JEWISH BURIAL ASSOCIATION OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COUNCIL FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds JASON TERRY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH LABOR COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds 70 FACES MEDIA 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: Irving & Dorothy Levy Family Foundation · Irwin a and Robert D Goodman Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Madison Community Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund
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 Jewish Federation of Madison 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Hias Inc — 88% 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.