· Private foundation
Robert H Smith Family Foundation
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k2 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $135k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $486k
- $250k+3 grants · $6.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK FOUNDATION | $6,007,000 |
| NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART | $400,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY | $391,000 |
| CHARLES E SMITH JEWISH DAY SCHOOL | $186,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $100,000 |
| HEBREW HOME OF GREATER WASHINGTON | $100,000 |
| PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S COTTAGE | $50,000 |
| NATIONAL SPORTING LIBRARY & MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| CAPITAL JEWISH MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICES AGENCY (JSSA) | $25,000 |
| DC HISTORY CENTER | $20,000 |
| WA DRAMA SOCIETY INC (DBA ARENA STAGE) | $20,000 |
| WOODROW WILSON CENTER | $15,000 |
| BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HOUSE FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–20, $700k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those 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.
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.
38 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2023, 28 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $68k 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
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK FOUNDATION INC7× · 2017–2023 · $20M · revenue +72%- NGNational Gallery of Art7× · 2017–2023 · $4.5M · revenue +29%
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC6× · 2017–2022 · $3.0M · revenue +243%
Funded once
- JFJOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTSone grant, 2022 · $2.3M
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $400k · revenue +33%- NMNATIONAL MUSEUM OF LANGUAGE INCone grant, 2019 · $100k
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 mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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 Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The mint museum welcomes all to be inspired and transformed through the power of art and creativity.
The weitzman national museum of american jewish history, on independence mall in philadelphia, presents educational programs and experiences that preserve, explore, and celebrate the history of jews in america. its purpose is to connect…
The museum of fine arts, houston serves as a welcoming and inclusive place for all people, connecting the communities of houston with diverse histories of art spanning 6,000 years and six continents. through our permanent collections,…
The huntington library, art museum, and botanical gardens shares its world-renowned collections to support scholarship, foster learning, inspire creativity, and offer transformative experiences for diverse audiences.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
The gilder lehrman institute of american history was founded in 1994 by richard gilder and lewis e. lehrman, visionaries and lifelong supporters of american history. the institute is the leading nonprofit and nonpartisan organization…
The baltimore museum of art connects art to baltimore and baltimore to the world, embodying a commitment to artistic excellence and social equity in every decision from art presentation, interpretation, and collecting, to the composition…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is David Bruce Smith 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.
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 46 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 14% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 61 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 UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds National Gallery of Art ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds New York Historical Society ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLES E SMITH JEWISH DAY SCHOOL OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds MONTPELIER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds The Frick Collection ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S COTTAGE AT THE SOLDIERS HOME ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds BENDER JCC OF GREATER WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds THE JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds GETTYSBURG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BETTER ANGELS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds HEBREW HOME OF GREATER WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON DRAMA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S TABLE INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL SPORTING LIBRARY AND MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ICIVICS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies ↗
- Who funds Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum ↗
- Who funds THE MEDSTAR-GEORGETOWN MEDICAL CENTER 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 Robert P and Arlene R Kogod Family Foundation · Alan and Amy Meltzer Family Foundation Inc · David Bruce Smith Foundation Inc · Sami & Annie Totah Family Foundation · The Morningstar Philanthropic Foundation D/B/A the Morningstar Foundation · Abraham & Freida Hochberg Foundation Inc · The Bessie Family Foundation · The Gary and Pennie Abramson Charitable Foundation · Galena-Yorktown Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Renaissance Charitable Foundation 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 Robert H Smith 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Icivics Inc — 13% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Restless Books Inc — 5% of income from government
- Bender Jcc of Greater Washington — 1% of income from government
- Hebrew Home of Greater Washington Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Johns Hopkins Hospital — 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 Robert H Smith Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert H Smith 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.