· Private foundation
Sam I Am Foundation
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 $10k13 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $144k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| HIGHLAND PARK PEACE PROJECT | $100,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE IDF | $30,000 |
| NORTH SHORE CONGREGATION ISRAEL | $29,340 |
| AM SHALOM | $25,000 |
| ANTI DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $25,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COUNCIL | $15,068 |
| THE ARK | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL KIDNEY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CHARLES M SCHWARTZ MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| ISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND | $2,500 |
| HELPING HANDS NETWORK INC | $1,980 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ALYN HOSPITAL | $1,849 |
| SECURE COMMUNITY NETWORK INC | $1,800 |
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 (FY17–25, $206k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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.
31 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 5 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $127k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO9× · 2017–2025 · $340k · revenue +13%
- JCJewish Community Centers of Chicago2× · 2022–2023 · $201k · revenue +14%
- TUThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum9× · 2017–2025 · $142k · revenue +9%
Funded once
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicagograduatedone grant, 2017 · $150k · revenue +60%- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $100k
- IFIMPACT FAMILY CENTERone grant, 2017 · $91k
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 GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
Mjhs health system is a charitable not-for-profit established to support the activities of affiliated organizations. mjhs is built on the core values of compassion, dignity and respect, first established by the four brooklyn ladies in…
Based on jewish values, the jewish federation of greater los angeles convenes and leads the community and leverages its resources to assure the continuity of the jewish people, support a secure state of israel, care for jews in need here…
The foundation is organized to foster, promote, support, develop, encourage and maintain the broad charitable, educational and/or religious purpose of, the jewish federation of metropolitan chicago, and the foundation as authorized in…
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
Long island jewish medical center is part of the northwell health ("northwell"), which strives to improve the health of the communities it serves and is committed to providing the highest quality clinical care; educating the current and…
The foundation was established exclusively for the benefit and to carry out the purposes of the mount sinai hospital medical center of chicago, a not-for-profit organization.
The jewish fund is organized and operates exclusively for charitable, educational, and religious purposes. the fund's primary activities are: supporting a jewish health care mission in the greater detroit area and michigan; promotion of…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
Committed to exceptional healthcare quality for all and actively engaged with our community, einstein drives scientific discovery and educates compassionate leaders in health and science.
Operating under the name mjhs foundation, the mission of this philanthropic organization is to raise the funds necessary to support the charitable health care efforts of the organizations within the mjhs health system family. with roots…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired and the most unlike its peers is Charles M Schwartz Memorial Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 30 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
58 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. 58 of the 83 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 Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago Foundation ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND PARK PEACE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds IMPACT FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL KIDNEY FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds CHARLES M SCHWARTZ MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND INC ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL FRAGILE X FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds MAZON A Jewish Response to Hunger ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HELPING HANDS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Michael Rolfe Pancreatic Cancer Foundation ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ALYN HOSPITALINC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF SOIL AND SOUL ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Jarvis Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Bill Bass Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · First Bank Chicago Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Sam I Am 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.
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% 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 Sam I Am Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sam I Am 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.