How much does Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc give?

Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc reported 68 grants totaling $4,154,500 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 47 and 73 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.

What does Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (74%), Education (7%), Human Services (5%).

Who are Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Milwaukee Ballet Company Inc ($4.6M), Milwaukee Art Museum Inc ($3.2M), Milwaukee Film Inc ($2.8M).

Does Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 8% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc, Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc, Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable.

Where is Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc based?

Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc is based in WI.

Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc

Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc at a glance

· Private foundation

Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$4.2M

Granted FY2024still arriving

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$700k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Arts & Culture$26MEducation$2.6MHuman Services$1.8MYouth Development$1.2MScience & Tech$1.1MCommunity Improvement$648kPublic Benefit$438kEnvironment$411kOther$0

02FY2024 · 68 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k1 grant · $5k
$10k–50k39 grants · $898k
$50k–250k26 grants · $2.3M
$250k+2 grants · $1.0M

$30,000

Median grant

States reached

$82M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
MILWAUKEE FILM INC	$700,000
MILWAUKEE BALLET	$301,667
MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATHER	$200,000
FIRST STAGE	$155,000
MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA	$155,000
MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM	$150,000
MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM	$140,000
TEENS GROW GREENS	$133,333
FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY	$110,000
IMAGINE MKE	$100,000
WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC	$100,000
NEXT DOOR FOUNDATION	$100,000
MILWAUKEE INSTITUTE OF ART & DESIGN	$92,000
NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE OF MILWAUKEE	$75,000
COLLEGE POSSIBLE	$65,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–24, $1.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$33M · 88 repeat orgs$1.7M to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +19% since the first grant, against +12% for those funded once.

88 repeat relationships: 60 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$33M

$1.4M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+19%

+12%

Still filing today

88%

67%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $240k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureCommunity ImprovementEducationHuman ServicesEnvironmentYouth DevelopmentOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

MILWAUKEE BALLET COMPANY INC
8× · 2017–2024 · $4.6M · revenue +5%
MA
MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC
8× · 2017–2024 · $3.2M · revenue +34%
MILWAUKEE FILM INC
8× · 2017–2024 · $2.8M · revenue +11%

Funded once

MC
MARCUS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING AR
one grant, 2019 · $750k
CA
CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE
one grant, 2018 · $160k
FH
FOREST HOME HISTORIC PRESERVATION A
one grant, 2018 · $100k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Milwaukee Public Theatre Inc

Making the arts accessible to all

—

Museum of Wisconsin Art Inc

The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…

Arts & Culture

Artworks for Milwaukee Inc

ArtWorks mission is preparing youth for tomorrow by providing transferable career skills through arts internships today. More than 1,450 high school students have completed ArtWorks internships since our inception.

Arts & Culture

Arts Midwest Incorporated

Arts Midwest works collaboratively with private and public arts supporters to support, inform, and celebrate arts organizations and creative communities across the Midwest. Our mission is to build unprecedented opportunity across the…

Arts & Culture

Milwaukee Development Corporation

-instigate, implement, participate in and promote such activities as shall, in the judgment of mdc, tend to support the general community interest in a strong, vital, aesthetically exciting and economically viable greater milwaukee…

Community Improvement

South Milwaukee Performing Arts Council

Support the south milwaukee performing arts center and community arts

Arts & Culture

Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Inc

Strengthen communities by providing high-quality and innovative artistic experiences that entertain, inspire, and unite diverse audiences.

Arts & Culture

Milwaukee Water Commons Inc

Milwaukee water commons is helping catalyze milwaukee as a true model water city-a place where we all have a stake in the health of our waters and all share in their stewardship and benefits. we are advancing our community envisioned water…

Environment

Milwaukee Youth Arts Center Inc

To provide the finest collaborative environment for: supporting performing arts training and education for a diverse population of youth; nurturing youth from diverse ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, instilling life-skills…

Arts & Culture

Milwaukee Women Inc

Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.

Education

Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee Inc

To promote interests and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector through strengthening organizational capacity, expanding volunteerism and encouraging collaboration.

—

Children's Theater of Madison Inc

To spark imagination and build community through the creation and experience of theater.

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee; the most unlike its peers is Bradley Family Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

96 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 96 of the 117 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

96/96

Grantees still filing

63/96

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Arts & Culture$23,165,023Other$6,406,200Human Services$1,759,000Community Improvement$1,692,500Education$1,031,000Recreation & Sports$510,000Food & Nutrition$479,399

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Greater Milwaukee Foundation IncWI120.5× affinity66 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Youth Foundation Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Northwestern Mutual Life Foundation Inc · Dorothy Inbusch Foundation Inc · Gardner Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

44report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc?

Find your warmest path to Richard and Ethel Herzfeld 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.

Play a game based on Richard and Ethel Herzfeld’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home