· Private foundation
Melvin & Estelle Gelman 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
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 $10k6 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $196k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $144k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $93,399 |
| ADAS Israel Congregation | $50,176 |
| University of Pennsylvania | $45,000 |
| Human Rights Campaign | $26,000 |
| Georgetown Day School | $20,000 |
| American Friends of the Hebrew University | $15,000 |
| Sibley Memorial Hospital Foundation | $13,000 |
| Washington Hebrew Congregation | $12,528 |
| Children's Hospital Found | $12,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,000 |
| Morselife Foundation | $10,000 |
| Riverdale | $10,000 |
| Jewish Federation of Group Homes | $10,000 |
| George Washington University | $10,000 |
| Foxhall Foundation | $7,500 |
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, $62k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 16% 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 +40% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 2 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k 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
- ADALZHEIMER'S DRUG DISCOVERY FOUNDATION2× · 2017–2018 · $211k · revenue +227%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC7× · 2017–2024 · $157k · revenue +40%
- TLTHE LAB SCHOOL OF WASHINGTON6× · 2017–2022 · $115k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- LALillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museumgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $18k · revenue +86%
- NHNATIONAL HEADACHE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $16k · revenue +7%
- MTMARTHA'S TABLE INCone grant, 2018 · $13k · revenue -38%
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 mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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.…
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.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
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…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To inform and enrich the intellectual lives of 20,000 alumni of harvard university in the washington, dc area and to assist harvard university with respect to applicants and undergraduates from the dc area.
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Foxhall Foundation. 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 43 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 73 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 TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DRUG DISCOVERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE LAB SCHOOL OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MORSELIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE WASHINGTON BALLET ↗
- Who funds USAGAINSTALZHEIMER'S ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH COUNTRY CLUB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL HEADACHE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIBLEY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S TABLE INC ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds SASHA BRUCE YOUTHWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Foxhall Foundation ↗
- Who funds National Liberty Museum ↗
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: Greater Washington Community Foundation · Duber Family Foundation · The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington Inc · The Dorothy G Bender Foundation Inc · The Morningstar Philanthropic Foundation D/B/A the Morningstar Foundation · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · American Gift Fund · American Endowment Foundation · The Silver Family Foundation Inc · Bernard Family Foundation · The Julius and Dorothy Lazarus Foundation 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 Melvin & Estelle Gelman 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Imagination Stage Inc — 13% of income from government
- Beebe Medical Foundation — 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.
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Find your warmest path to Melvin & Estelle Gelman 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.