· Private foundation
Kahn Sovel Mertz Fund
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k21 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $56k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CURE MULTIPLE MYELOMA CORP | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM | $36,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF DETROIT | $20,000 |
| ADAT SHALOM SYNAGOGUE | $6,970 |
| NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WIMON IN THE ART | $5,000 |
| SANCTUM HOUSE | $5,000 |
| HADASSAH | $5,000 |
| HIAS | $5,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $5,000 |
| DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS | $4,000 |
| SCLERODRMA FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| DAILY GIVING | $2,759 |
| JARC | $2,625 |
| CANTOR'S ASSEMBLY | $2,500 |
| JEWISH THOLOGICAL SOCIETY | $2,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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 +57% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 32 since wound down; 11 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, 28% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $103k 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
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM3× · 2017–2023 · $37k · revenue +206%
- OAORT AMERICA INC6× · 2018–2023 · $30k · revenue +14%
THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS8× · 2017–2024 · $18k · revenue +46%
Funded once
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2022 · $2k · revenue -40%- TJTHE JEWISH ENSEMBLE THEATREone grant, 2021 · $1k · revenue 0%
- EFEMU FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $1k
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 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…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Bje enhances the quality of, increases access to, and encourages participation in jewish education throughout the jewish communities of greater los angeles. bje is an advocate, planner, catalyst, and creative leader for strengthening and…
The jewish fund is organized and operates exclusively for charitable, educational, and religious purposes. the fund's primary activities are: supporting a jewish health care mission in the greater detroit area and michigan; promotion of…
Young judaea is a diverse community that educates and empowers jewish youth to deeply engage with israel and to lead positive change for the jewish people, israel and the world.
To conduct educational activities and to provide scholarly perspectives on foreign and domestic policies that impact the jewish community in the united states and the broader american public.
The mission of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA National Memorial, Inc., doing business as the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, is to preserve, interpret, and share the history of Jewish Americans who have served in…
Through thought leadership, community programs, leadership development, and organizational partnerships, jsp is building a movement to activate the creative power of the jewish community.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Family Service and the most unlike its peers is Liberty Temple Senior Project. 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 36 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 78 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 DETROIT ↗
- Who funds CURE MULTIPLE MYELOMA CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds SANCTUM HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds CANTOR'S ASSEMBLY ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN MICHIG ↗
- Who funds GROSSE POINTE JEWISH COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds DAILY GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Humble Design Inc ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Jewish Women International ↗
- Who funds SCLERODERMA FOUNDATION OF GREATER CHICAGO ↗
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: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Jerold and Ellen Minkin Family Foundation · Ben N Teitel Charitable Trust · The Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe Family Foundation · The Eugene Applebaum Family Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · Alan Jay and Sue Kaufman Foundation · The Ravitz Foundation · Edward and Norma Jean Meer Charitable Foundation · Marjorie and Maxwell Jospey Foundation · Jewish Federation of Detroit · The Kresge 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 Kahn Sovel Mertz Fund 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Kahn Sovel Mertz Fund?
Find your warmest path to Kahn Sovel Mertz Fund 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.