· Private foundation
Samis Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k29 grants · $87k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $535k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+7 grants · $6.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWEST YESHIVA HIGH SCHOOL | $1,636,448 |
| SEATTLE HEBREW ACADEMY | $1,501,814 |
| JEWISH DAY SCHOOL | $1,049,769 |
| MENACHEM MENDEL SEATTLE CHEDER | $861,189 |
| SEATTLE JEWISH COMMUNITY SCHOOL | $734,862 |
| PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS | $416,980 |
| NLI USA INC | $250,000 |
| CENTRAL FUND OF ISRAEL | $200,000 |
| TORAH DAY SCHOOL | $182,913 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER SEATTLE | $181,442 |
| ISRAEL NATURE & HERITAGE OF AMERICA | $100,000 |
| SEPHARDIC ADVENTURE CAMP | $88,366 |
| CAMP SOLOMON SCHECHTER | $81,180 |
| URJ CAMP KALSMAN | $81,000 |
| HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION | $65,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $337k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 15% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +49% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
77 repeat relationships — 51 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 19 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $335k 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
- NYNORTHWEST YESHIVA HIGH SCHOOL6× · 2019–2024 · $6.6M · revenue +75% · 50% of their budget
- SHSeattle Hebrew Academy6× · 2019–2024 · $6.2M · revenue +35% · 26% of their budget
- NBNefesh B'Nefesh Jewish Souls United Inc2× · 2020–2021 · $1.0M · revenue +58%
Funded once
- UFUNION FOR REFORM JUDAISMone grant, 2019 · $159k
- CTCOMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE INCone grant, 2019 · $41k
- NINEWCAJE INCone grant, 2019 · $39k · revenue -36%
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 jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
The jewish coalition builds a jewish voice in the pacific northwest advancing immigrant justice and domestic policy, following the leadership of impacted community.
To support a strong and secure israel and to carry out public information activities on the middle east peace issues in the united states.
To promote, benefit, and support Jewish religious, charitable & educational activities in Israel and the USA.
The jewish electorate institute (jei) is an independent, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that surveys, interprets, reports, and educates the public about the perspectives, voting behaviors, and motivations of the american jewish…
To voluntarily assist the house of religious learning known as yeshiva neveh zion in israel
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Bshvil Hamachar 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 30 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
91 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. 91 of the 153 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 NORTHWEST YESHIVA HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Seattle Hebrew Academy ↗
- Who funds NORTHEND JEWISH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SEWARD PARK JEWISH PRESCHOOL CO-OP ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds Nefesh B'Nefesh Jewish Souls United Inc ↗
- Who funds NLI USA INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER SEATTLE ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE JEWISH GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Camp Solomon Schechter ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds AMIT CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR INITIATIVES IN JEWISH EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ALLIANCE ISRAELITE UNIVERSELLE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF OGEN INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NATAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IMPACTISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FUNDERS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF SAMI SHAMOON COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING ↗
- Who funds Kav LNoar Foundation ↗
- Who funds B'NAI B'RITH YOUTH ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds PRIZMAH CENTER FOR JEWISH DAY SCHOOLS 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: Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle · Seattle Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · The Harold Grinspoon Foundation · Newman Family Foundation · Tillie & Alfred Shemanski Testamentary Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Shimon Ben Joseph Foundation Dba Jim Joseph Foundation · Lott Foundation · Fjc · United Way of King County
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 Samis 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 Samis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Samis 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.