· Private foundation
Phyllis & Bennett Cerf Foundation Inc
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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $28k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| National Book Foundation | $17,500 |
| First Book | $10,000 |
| Citymeals on Wheels | $1,500 |
| Planned Parenthood | $1,500 |
| Innocence Project | $1,500 |
| ACLU Foundation | $1,500 |
| City Harvest | $1,500 |
| Presidents and Fellows of Harvard | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| WNYC | $500 |
| Carnegie Hall Corporation | $500 |
| Hearts of Gold | $250 |
| ThirteenWNET | $100 |
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 (FY21–25, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +3% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 10 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- TMTHE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK INC2× · 2023–2024 · $15k · revenue +22%
CITY HARVEST INC6× · 2020–2025 · $11k · revenue +3%- WWWords Without Borders Inc3× · 2021–2023 · $8k · revenue +33%
Funded once
- SHSUGAR HILL CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF ART AND STORYTELLINGone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +0%
- DLDayton Literary Peace Prize Foundationone grant, 2022 · $875 · revenue -77%
- HIHeifer Internationalone grant, 2024 · $500
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.
The museum of the city of new york fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world's most influential metropolis. it engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city's past, present, and…
Enhance Columbia University's education mission by acquiring and publishing outstanding original works by scholars and others that contribute to an understanding of global human concerns. Columbia University Press became part of the…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The national september 11 memorial & museum at the world trade center bears solemn witness to the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, and february 26, 1993. located at a site made sacred through loss, the memorial & museum remembers…
See schedule osfmoma believes the art of our time is vital and shares it with passion and purpose, and that art and the creative process can open minds and help build a better world. for that reason, we assemble unparalleled collections,…
Archipelago books is a not-for-profit press devoted to publishing outstanding translations of vital works of classic and contemporary world literature. in our twenty-one years, we have brought out more than two hundred twenty-five books…
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.
Committed to innovation, the solomon r. guggenheim foundation (the "foundation") collects, (continued on schedule o)
The founding mission of the new-york historical society ("the new york historical "tnyh") is to collect, preserve, and interpret, for the broadest possible public, material relevant to the history of the united states in general and of new…
The mint museum welcomes all to be inspired and transformed through the power of art and creativity.
For over 150 years, the 92nd street y, new york has been serving its communities and the larger world by bringing people together (continued on schedule o)and providing exceptional, groundbreaking programs in the performing and visual…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Mercantile Library Association of the City of New York Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 30 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 FIRST BOOK ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds CITYMEALS-ON-WHEELS ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Words Without Borders Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW ART PUBLICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SUGAR HILL CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF ART AND STORYTELLING ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation ↗
- Who funds HEARTS OF GOLD INC ↗
- Who funds CRAFT EMERGENCY RELIEF FUND INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY 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: The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Brooklyn Community Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Phyllis & Bennett Cerf 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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 Phyllis & Bennett Cerf Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Phyllis & Bennett Cerf Foundation Inc 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.