· Private foundation
Michael E Gellert Trust
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $68k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $112k
- $250k+1 grant · $325k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE WATERFORD SCHOOL | $325,000 |
| CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER | $62,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| SUNDANCE INSTITUTE | $35,000 |
| BALLET WEST | $33,000 |
| RADCLIFFE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 23% 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.
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 +24% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- SPST PAUL'S SCHOOL7× · 2017–2024 · $588k · revenue +127%
AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE CO INC7× · 2017–2023 · $318k · revenue +43%- TNThe New School7× · 2017–2023 · $258k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- THTHE HUNTER COLLEGE FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $18k · revenue +22%
- TCTHE CHAPIN SCHOOL LTDone grant, 2017 · $17k · revenue +19%
- BRBLACK ROCK FOREST CONSORTIUM INCone grant, 2017 · $17k · revenue -64%
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.
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Manhattan university is an independent catholic instituion of higher learning that embraces qualified men and women of all faiths, cultures, and traditions. the mission of manhattan university is to provide a contemporary, person-centered…
Bard college seeks to provide a challenging academic program and a supportive environment that fosters a collaborative interchange of ideas in the classroom as well as ambition to achieve excellence.
At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Philharmonic Symphony Society of Ny Inc and the most unlike its peers is Ballet West. 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 64 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 11% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 35 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ST PAUL'S SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE CO INC ↗
- Who funds The New School ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S HEALTH COALITION ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BALLET WEST ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds ST LUKES CHAMBER ENSEMBLE INC ↗
- Who funds THE HUNTER COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHAPIN SCHOOL LTD ↗
- Who funds BLACK ROCK FOREST CONSORTIUM INC ↗
- Who funds Caramoor Center for Music & the Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION WESTERN HEMISPHERE REGION ↗
- Who funds HELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds 21ST CENTURY PARKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARY BYRON PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds KIDS IN CRISIS INC ↗
- Who funds MASTERVOICES 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: Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Michael E Gellert Trust 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.
- Kids in Crisis Inc — 49% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% of income from government
- American Repertory Theatre Co 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Michael E Gellert Trust?
Find your warmest path to Michael E Gellert Trust 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.