· Private foundation
Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2020 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
58% of Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc’s FY2020 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2020 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc named its own grantees at scale: 17 organizations, $31k. 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 50% of MELVYN AND BARBARA CIMENT FAMILY FOUNDATION INC’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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY | $8,600 |
| AMIT | $5,000 |
| KEMP MILL SYNAGOGUE | $3,800 |
| SULAM | $2,680 |
| CHAI LIFELINE | $1,800 |
| BONEI OLAM | $1,360 |
| YOUNG ISRAEL SHOMREI EMUNAH | $1,200 |
| MIKVAH EMUNAH SOCIETY | $1,110 |
| BIKUR CHOLIM OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $850 |
| YAD YEHUDAH OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $750 |
| GREATER WASHINGTON COMMUNITY KOLLEL | $720 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES | $500 |
| EZER MITZION | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $400 |
| TORAH SCHOOL OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $350 |
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 (FY17–20, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 24% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 26% of Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2019, 7 since wound down; 19 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, 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 FY2020, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- MJMELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY3× · 2018–2020 · $18k · revenue +67%
- BABEN AND ESTHER ROSENBLOOM HILLEL CENTER FOR JEWISH LIFE AT UNIVERSITY OF MD2× · 2017–2018 · $5k · revenue +7%
- SISulam Inc3× · 2017–2020 · $5k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- MSMORIAH SCHOOL OF ENGLEWOODgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $500 · revenue +28%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE JERUSALEM KOLLEL INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $500 · revenue +65%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF KOLL EL TORAS ZERAIM JERUSALEM INCone grant, 2018 · $360 · revenue -42%
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.
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
The school trains advanced talmudic scholars, enabling them to become high level teachers and religious leaders in israel and the united states using specific methodology combining traditional talmudic study with innovative learning…
Religious School
To promote the furtherance of jewish religious and rabbinic education on a college and graduate level in israel and to increase the dissemination of scholarly research works in the fields of torah, talmud and halacha.
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…
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 American Friends of Alyn Hospitalinc and the most unlike its peers is Telemachus and Irene Demoulas Family Foundation. 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 31 years old; the field is 16. 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 11% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 58 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds MELVIN J BERMAN HEBREW ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE TORAH SCHOOL OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds BEN AND ESTHER ROSENBLOOM HILLEL CENTER FOR JEWISH LIFE AT UNIVERSITY OF MD ↗
- Who funds Sulam Inc ↗
- Who funds ENDOWMENT FOR MIDDLE EAST TRUTH ↗
- Who funds BIKUR CHOLIM OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds Bonei Olam Inc ↗
- Who funds DAILY GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds MORIAH SCHOOL OF ENGLEWOOD ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE JERUSALEM KOLLEL INC ↗
- Who funds EZER MIZION ↗
- Who funds SAVE A CHILD'S HEART FOUNDATION US INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF KOLL EL TORAS ZERAIM JERUSALEM INC ↗
- Who funds Ohel Childrens Home & Family Services Inc ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds Telemachus and Irene Demoulas Family Foundation ↗
- Who funds WHEATON VOLUNTEER RESCUE SQUAD ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY ↗
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: The Dennis Berman Family Foundation Inc · Brian and Dafna Berman Family Foundation Inc · Mayberg Foundation Inc · The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington Inc · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Berman Charitable Trust · Leslie & Samuel Kaplan Family Foundation · Edith & Michael Gelfand Foundation Inc · The Gary & Carol Berman Family Foundation Inc · The Colburn Family 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 Melvyn and Barbara Ciment Family Foundation Inc 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.
- Children's Inn at Nih Inc — 10% of income from government
- Melvin J Berman Hebrew Academy — 2% of income from government
- The Torah School of Greater Washington Inc — 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.