· Public charity
Peggy & John Garson Family Foundation
To further the charitable, educational and religious purposes of the jewish federation of cleveland ("federation").
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $232,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $250,250 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $17,750 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $150k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND | $75,000 |
| BELLEFAIRE JEWISH CHILDRENS BUREAU | $25,000 |
| MANDEL JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF CLEVELAND | $20,000 |
| FOOTPATH FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| HAVEN HOME LLC | $15,000 |
| WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY | $15,000 |
| BIRTHING BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITIES | $10,000 |
| HOMELESS HOOKUP | $10,000 |
| FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES INC | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND PEACEMAKERS INC | $10,000 |
| LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY CENTER OF GREATER CLEVELAND | $10,000 |
| NEAR WEST SIDE MULTI-SERVICE CORPORATION | $10,000 |
| SEEDS OF LITERACY | $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 (FY22–25, $257k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 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.
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 +25% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 9 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, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $103k 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
- UHUNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INC2× · 2020–2022 · $1.8M · revenue +25%
- GBGOODS BANK NEO2× · 2023–2024 · $90k · revenue +11%
- TMThe Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland4× · 2022–2025 · $80k · revenue +322%
Funded once
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue +13%- USUNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT INCone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue -34%
- CFCENTER FOR JEWISH CULTURE & CREATIVITYgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +401%
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.
Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.
Our mission is to promote a just and peaceful community by honoring all people, building their capacity to act, and facilitating opportunities for them to engage in conflict constructively. We continue to fulfill our mission by…
Global cleveland is dedicated to growing northeast ohio's economy by welcoming and connecting international people to opportunities and fostering a more inviting community for those seeking a place to call home.
The mission of cleveland leadership center (the organization) is to build a continuum of civic leaders committed to our community's excellence by serving as a catalyst for civic engagement. the organization achieves its mission by…
To help individuals and families achieve economic self-sufficiency and emotional stability.
Cleveland public market corporations mission is to preserve the city's public market tradition while making the local food system more accessible, equitable, and diverse.
Cleveland public library foundation's mission is to raise philanthropic and advocacy support for the cleveland public library.
The purpose of Hillel is to be a center for enriching the lives of Jewish students in the Greater Cincinnati area and to strengthen Jewish identity through social and a broad range of programs and services in an atmosphere that is…
To work as a coalition of labor unions, community organzation, and religious community to raise the public awarness of and build campaigns to promote workers rights an social justice issues.
Habitat for humanity of cleveland is a non-profit christian housing ministry. habitat works in partnership with god and people everywhere, from all walks of life, to develop communities for people in need by building and selling houses…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Promise of Greater Cleveland and the most unlike its peers is Refresh Collective. 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 29 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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.
32 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.
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 UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds GOODS BANK NEO ↗
- Who funds BELLEFAIRE JEWISH CHILDREN'S BUREAU ↗
- Who funds The Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland ↗
- Who funds BUILDING HOPE IN THE CITY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds LIFEACT ↗
- Who funds RID-ALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR JEWISH CULTURE & CREATIVITY ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND PEACEMAKERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAVEN HOME LLC ↗
- Who funds GMILUTH CHASODIM (THE HEBREW FREE LOAN ASSOCIATION) ↗
- Who funds FOOTPATH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE INK ↗
- Who funds WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE OF CLEVELAND INC ↗
- Who funds HEIGHTS ARTS COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds HOMELESS HOOKUP ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Near Westside MultiService Corp ↗
- Who funds REFRESH COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds BIRTHING BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF LITERACY ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND KIDS' BOOK BANK ↗
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 Cleveland Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · The George Gund Foundation · Treu Mart Fund · The Cyrus Eaton Foundation · The Andrews Foundation · The Sk Wellman Foundation · The Abington Foundation · Murphy Family Foundation · Cavaliers Youth Foundation · Mt Sinai Health Care 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 Peggy & John Garson Family 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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 Peggy & John Garson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Peggy & John Garson Family 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.