· Private foundation
Louis Kesten & Esther Kesten 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.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 47% of LOUIS KESTEN & ESTHER KESTEN FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $69k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $210k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST | $135,961 |
| OPERATION BENJAMIN | $73,816 |
| SEFORIM BLOG INC | $24,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC | $19,000 |
| YISMACH MOSHE INSTITUTE | $16,000 |
| CONGREGATION AGUDATH ISRAEL | $10,000 |
| YOUNG ISRAEL OF CENTURY CITY | $2,905 |
| SHARSHERET | $1,800 |
| BNEI AKIVA OF LOS ANGELES | $1,800 |
| RABBINICAL COLLEGE OF AMERICA | $1,800 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| VALLEY TORAH HIGH SCHOOL | $1,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +32% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 12 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $136k 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
- FOFRIENDS OF CHANA UK INC2× · 2017–2018 · $200k · revenue ×22
- OBOPERATION BENJAMIN INC3× · 2022–2024 · $89k · revenue +190%
- TGTHE GESHER FOUNDATION INC2× · 2022–2023 · $50k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- GMGindi Maimonides Academyone grant, 2018 · $250k
- AYAM YISRAEL CHAI FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +176%
- TDTHE DESTINY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +1% · 27% of their budget
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.
Support of religious schools in Israel
The organization will provide financial assistance to educational institutions that promote the observance of the jewish religion, its laws and traditions, and sacred texts, including yeshivat nachalat yossef, located in jerusalem, israel.
Religious & charitable- to provide funds to enable the study of torah.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Israel Education Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Tikvah Fund. 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 52 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 Gindi Maimonides Academy ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CHANA UK INC ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AM YISRAEL CHAI FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE DESTINY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION BENJAMIN INC ↗
- Who funds THE GESHER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds THE TIKVAH FUND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BEIT OROT INC ↗
- Who funds BNEI AKIVA OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NISHMAT INC ↗
- Who funds Beis Midrash of Queens ↗
- Who funds Ohr Torah Stone Institutions of Israel ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YULA HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BRITISH SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RABBINICAL COLLEGE OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Sharsheret 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: Jewish Communal Fund · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Jewish Federation Council of Greater La · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Jay Morris Foundation Inc · Fjc · Davmarn Foundation · Jack and Gitta Nagel Foundation · Ryzman Foundation Inc · The Elishis Family Foundation · Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth Leisrael) Inc · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma
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 Louis Kesten & Esther Kesten 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.
- Rabbinical College of America — 5% of income from government
- Sharsheret Inc — 4% 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 Louis Kesten & Esther Kesten Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Louis Kesten & Esther Kesten 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.