· Private foundation
Klaff Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
61% of Klaff Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to American Endowment Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 44 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Klaff Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 54 organizations, $8M. It is dated, not current.
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.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k23 grants · $99k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $575k
- $50k–250k20 grants · $2.0M
- $250k+6 grants · $5.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| American Endowment Foundation FBO KFF Donor Advise | $2,000,000 |
| Jewish Community Foundation San Diego | $1,750,000 |
| The Fallen Heroes Fund (Ner L'Horeinu Inc) | $1,000,000 |
| Hillel International | $528,000 |
| Johannesburg Jewish Helping Hand - US | $275,000 |
| Rashi Foundation (Via PEF Israel Endowment Funds) | $250,000 |
| Friends of United Hatzalah (Eli Beer) | $180,000 |
| Jewish National Fund - USA | $167,000 |
| Jewish United Fund | $154,000 |
| Thresholds | $130,000 |
| The Fresh Air Fund | $120,000 |
| Israel Guide Dog Center | $118,000 |
| World Jewish Relief Inc | $100,000 |
| Challenged Athletes Foundation | $100,000 |
| WEST POINT JEWISH CHAPEL FUND HON COL MICKEY MARCU | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% of those 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.
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 +37% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
81 repeat relationships — 50 still active in FY2023, 31 since wound down; 56 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
- JCJewish Community Centers of Chicago3× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +23%
- THTHE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2022 · $1.0M · revenue +122%
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO6× · 2018–2024 · $766k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- AFAEF FBO KFF Donor Advised Fundone grant, 2021 · $6.7M
- AFAEF FBO KFF Donor Adviser Fundone grant, 2022 · $6.4M
- RFRASHI FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $150k
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…
Our vision is to reignite the zionist spirit and meet the needs of jewish civilization in the twenty-first century by connecting people around the world through the vibrancy and creativity of contemporary israeli culture.
Based on jewish values, the jewish federation of greater los angeles convenes and leads the community and leverages its resources to assure the continuity of the jewish people, support a secure state of israel, care for jews in need here…
The shalom hartman institute (shi) is a leading research and educational center serving israel and world jewry. we work to enrich the moral and spiritual life of israel and the jewish people, deepen the commitment to pluralism and israel's…
Committed to exceptional healthcare quality for all and actively engaged with our community, einstein drives scientific discovery and educates compassionate leaders in health and science.
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
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.
See schedule othe organization is a not-for-profit, public charity established in 1911 to provide for the quality and continuity of jewish life in western new york and around the world through private philanthropy. the foundation seeks,…
To create an informed, celebratory and satisfying jewish community for students at the university of southern california, to deepen jewish identity through social, intellectual and spiritual participation, to offer diversified…
To strengthen and expand the u.s.-israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the united states and israel.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The mission of the institute is to translate basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and related developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. it is catalyzing a new…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Hebrew University Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Friends of Kzn Jewish Charities Inc. 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 35 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) — 3% 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.
156 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. 156 of the 267 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds NER L HOREINU INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Johannesburg Jewish Helping Hands - US ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLDS ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND-USA INC ↗
- Who funds FUNDACION TZEDAKA USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds FRESH AIR FUND ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL GUIDE DOG CENTER FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds THE HINDA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGED ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds WEST POINT JEWISH CHAPEL FUND ↗
- Who funds DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds WORLD JEWISH RELIEF USA INC ↗
- Who funds WILD TOMORROW FUND ↗
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 Metropolitan Chicago · Circle of Service Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · The Chicago Community Trust · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jarvis Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Sidley Austin Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc
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 Klaff 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.
- The Special Children Center — 5% of income from government
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
- National Yiddish Book Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Baseball Inc — 1% of income from government
- Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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 Klaff Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Klaff 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.