· Public charity
Jewish Federation of the Berkshires
The JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE BERKSHIRES cares for those in need and nurtures and sustains the jewish community locally, in israel and around the world today and for future generations.
Read this first · the figures below need context
77% of Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’s FY2024 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. FY2024 names 5 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 8 grants below total $378,238 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $659,704 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $281,466 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $76k
- $250k+1 grant · $282k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA | $282,338 |
| HEVREH OF SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE | $31,500 |
| CONGREGATION KNESSET ISRAEL | $20,000 |
| HILLEL AT UMASS AMHERST | $13,750 |
| CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL | $11,000 |
| TEMPLE ANSHE AMUNIM | $7,500 |
| PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUND | $7,000 |
| YIDDISH BOOK CENTER | $5,150 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 78% 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.
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 +129% since the first grant, against -9% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- HOHEVREH OF SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $216k
- KIKNESSET ISRAEL CONGREGATION6× · 2019–2024 · $115k
- ALANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE5× · 2019–2023 · $88k · revenue +47%
Funded once
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Incone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -9%- COCHABAD OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY INCone grant, 2022 · $8k
- CBCONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL BETH ISRAEL SYNAGOGUEone grant, 2017 · $6k
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.
AJC's mission is to enhance the wellbeing of the Jewish people and Israel, and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. In pursuit of this mission, AJC advances democratic principles, fights…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
To enrich the lives of jewish and undergraduate students so that they may enrich the jewish people and the world. penn state hillel's student leaders, professionals, and lay leaders are dedicated to creating a pluralistic, welcoming, and…
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…
Enrich the lives of jewish students
The jewish institute for national security of america (jinsa) was founded in 1976 as a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to advancing u.s. national security interests in the middle east, of which a critical pillar is a robust…
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
Yivo's mission is to study the thousand-year history of jewish life in eastern europe and russia in all its aspects: language, history, religion, folkways and material culture. yivo's archive and library preserves a significant collection…
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…
The foundation's mission is to research, locate, translate, and create jewish religious, literary, biblical, and talmudic works for religious, scholarly and cultural purposes for the general public.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation Council of Greater La and the most unlike its peers is Laren Montessori School. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
6 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. 6 of the 18 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 ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds HILLEL HOUSE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MASS AT AMHERST ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL YIDDISH BOOK CENTER 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: The Harold Grinspoon Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 the Berkshires 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.
- National Yiddish Book Center Inc — 2% 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.