· Private foundation
Melvin and Sylvia Kafka Foundation co Sara Suchman
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| American Jewish World Service | $3,500 |
| American Friends of Combatants for Peace | $3,250 |
| National Immigrant Justice Center | $3,250 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,058 |
| HIAS | $3,000 |
| Doctors without Borders | $2,250 |
| Southern Documentary Fund | $2,250 |
| Carolina Abortion Fund | $2,250 |
| Center for Constitutional Rights | $2,250 |
| Americans United for Separation of Church and State | $2,000 |
| Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust | $2,000 |
| The American Bar Foundation | $1,000 |
| National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector | $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 (FY24–24, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +43% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 46% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC8× · 2017–2025 · $28k · revenue +98%- HIHIAS INC8× · 2018–2025 · $21k · revenue +180%
FRACTURED ATLAS INC4× · 2019–2024 · $12k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- SVSchool Volunteers of Bridgeportone grant, 2019 · $5k
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +101%- AALIGHTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +33%
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.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
A nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to enhancing international peace and security in the 21st century, thereby retaining its focus on nuclear weapons but expanding to include other present emerging security threats.
To contribute to the full enjoyment of human rights in the americas through effective use of the tools of the inter-american system and international human rights law
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
American foreign service association (afsa) is both the principal advocate for the long-term institutional wellbeing of the professional career foreign service and responsible for safeguarding the interest of afsa members. (continued on…
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
To support the work of the amercian civil liberties union of louisiana through litigation, public education and limited lobbying in support of civil liberties.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the most unlike its peers is Carolina Abortion 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 34 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.
22 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. 22 of the 29 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 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds Human Kindness Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF COMBATANTS FOR PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ALIGHT ↗
- Who funds NC WARN INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN DOCUMENTARY FUND ↗
- Who funds CAROLINA ABORTION FUND ↗
- Who funds EMPOWERMENT INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR MONTESSORI IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR ↗
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: Shared Visions Foundation Inc · Triangle Community Foundation Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Melvin and Sylvia Kafka Foundation co Sara Suchman 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.