· Private foundation
Mervyn H & Leslie D Sternberg Foundation
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 |
|---|---|
| PETOSKEY & HARBOR SPRINGS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| BOCA RATON REGIONAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| JEWISH ASSOCIATION FOR RESIDENTIAL CARE INC (JARC) | $2,000 |
| PAPANICOLAOU CORPS FOR CANCER RESEARCH INC | $1,750 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| ISRAEL TENNIS CENTERS FOUNDATION INC | $1,300 |
| RAYMOND F KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | $1,000 |
| THE WICK THEATRE AND COSTUME MUSEUM INC | $1,000 |
| HARBOR SPRINGS SCHOOL DISTRICT | $500 |
| BREAKTHROUGH T1D-MID OHIO CHAPTER | $300 |
| LITTLE TRAVERSE BAY HUMANE SOCIETY | $300 |
| NORTON MUSEUM OF ART | $300 |
| TEMPLE ISRAEL OF DETROIT | $250 |
| HARBOR SPRINGS LYRIC THEATRE | $250 |
| MORIKAMI INC AKA MORIKAMI MUSEUM AND JAPANESE GARDENS | $242 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 31% of your 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 17% of Mervyn H & Leslie D Sternberg Foundation’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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +40% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 3 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- RFRAYMOND F KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $10k · revenue +72%
- GLGreat Lakes Center for the Arts4× · 2017–2023 · $9k · revenue +85%
- HSHARBOR SPRINGS LYRIC THEATRE6× · 2017–2025 · $7k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- AKANDREW KUKES FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL ANXIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $500 · revenue +402%
- MFMAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $300 · revenue +72%
- ACADULT CONGENITAL HEART ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2018 · $250 · revenue -7%
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.
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.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
Our mission is to accelerate scientific progress, understand the root causes of disease, and narrow the gap between discoveries and impact on patients.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The samuel waxman cancer research foundation (the "foundation") funds innovative research to bring faster cures to patients. in addition to supporting ongoing collaborative research in specific cancers, our scientists are investigating the…
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
Asco association promotes the common business interests of its members by: (1) advocating for policies that improve the quality of cancer care; (2) maintaining the highest standards of oncology medical care through programs supporting…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Old School Square Center for the Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is Andrew Kukes Foundation for Social Anxiety 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 40 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 68 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 PAPANICOLAOU CORPS FOR CANCER RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds PETOSKEY-HARBOR SPRINGS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds RAYMOND F KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Great Lakes Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds HARBOR SPRINGS LYRIC THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL TENNIS CENTERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MIAMI CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH ASSOCIATION FOR RESIDENTIAL CARE INC ↗
- Who funds The Wick Theatre & Costume Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds CANCER RESEARCH FUND OF THE DAMON RUNYON-WALTER WINCHELL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds NORTON MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds CROOKED TREE ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds OLALASHE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OLD SCHOOL SQUARE CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds TRI COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE TRAVERSE BAY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF SOUTH PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HENRY E HUNTINGTON LIBRARY AND ART GALLERY ↗
- Who funds LYNN UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds ANDREW KUKES FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL ANXIETY INC ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION 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: Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Offield Family Foundation · Frey Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Collier Community Foundation Inc · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Mervyn H & Leslie D Sternberg 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.
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Jewish Association for Residential Care Inc — 1% of income from government
- Lynn University Inc — 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.