How much did Samuel S. Fels Fund grant in FY2024?

Samuel S. Fels Fund reported 75 grants totaling $1,570,000 in its FY2024 IRS filing.

Where is Samuel S. Fels Fund based?

Samuel S. Fels Fund is based in Philadelphia, PA.

Samuel S. Fels Fund

Foundation Dossiers Also receives grants — funding profile →

Philadelphia, PA · Private foundation

Samuel S. Fels Fund

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.

$1.6M

Granted FY2024still arriving

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$300k

Largest

01What you fund

0196% classified

What you funded, over time

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

Civil Rights$3.5MArts & Culture$2.7MHuman Services$2.3MCommunity Improvement$1.2MCrime & Legal$1.2MPhilanthropy$840kYouth Development$778kEducation$619kOther$0

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

Each cell is that theme’s share of the year’s giving · ⚡ ringed cells mark a flagged jump.

03FY2024 · 75 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

Grant-size mix · FY2016–FY2024

FY16

92%

$1.6M

FY17

26%

73%

$1.8M

FY18

92%

$1.9M

FY20

100%

$2.5M

FY21

12%

68%

20%

$3.4M

FY22

10%

69%

21%

$2.3M

FY23

12%

74%

14%

$2.0M

FY24

69%

19%

$1.6M

Under $10k$10k–50k$50k–250k$250k+

In FY2016, 92% of your dollars went out in $250k+ checks; by FY2024 that was 19%. Each year’s bar is its own 100%, so the bands show the mix, not the total.

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$46M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
ROCKWOOD LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE	$300,000
WINDCALL INSTITUTE	$135,000
AMISTAD LAW PROJECT	$30,000
ASIAN AMERICANS UNITED	$30,000
BEYOND THE BARS INC	$30,000
COALITION OF AFRICIAN COMMUNITIES -	$30,000
JUNTOS	$30,000
LIFT EVERY VOICE PHILLY INC	$30,000
NEIGHBORHOOD LAND POWER PROJECT	$30,000
NEW SANCTUARY MOVEMENT OF PHILADELP	$30,000
MOVEMENT ALLIANCE PROJECT	$30,000
NATIONAL DOMESTIC WORKERS ALLIANCE	$30,000
PHILADELPHIA ASSEMBLY INC	$30,000
PHILLY BLACK WORKER PROJECT	$30,000
SPIRAL Q PUPPET THEATER	$30,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY21–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 95% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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

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.

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.

03Your edge

The orgs you fund vs the ones you don’t

You skew toward the sturdier end of a fragile field.

The organisations you back are larger and somewhat healthier than comparable nonprofits nearby that you don't fund — but the edge is real, not dramatic: 75% of those you fund still carry a fragility flag, against 77% of the unfunded. In a sector where most run thin, you lean toward resilience rather than backing a financially secure elite.

The kind of organization you back

85% of the organizations you back live mainly on donations, against 52% of the comparable nonprofits nearby you don’t fund. The ones you pick show fewer of the warning signs below than the field you don’t fund.

What they work on

Arts & Culture29% vs 9%
Crime & Legal15% vs 2%
Youth Development10% vs 2%
Human Services15% vs 11%

The nearby nonprofits you don’t fund are concentrated in Education, Health.

How they hold up

Less than a month of cash4% vs 15%

you fund (48) you don’t (1931)· share of each group

You fund (48)You don’t (1931)

Median size (revenue)$1.2M$1.3M

Operating margin10%4%

Financially fragile75%77%

Comparison vs unfunded, size/cause-matched nonprofits in your county. Association, not proof — the funder enables, it does not solely cause.

repeat funding

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.

59%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$8.5M · 100 repeat orgs$6.0M to everyone else

100 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 79 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

Of your 55 multi-year relationships, 32 repeat the same amount every year (22% of multi-year dollars), the pattern of a standing commitment. The rest vary year to year. Grant terms aren’t stated in the filing; this is inferred from the payment pattern.

You also report $1.6Mapproved for future payment (Form 990-PF, Part XV) — grants already committed but not yet paid, a forward pledge the current-year ledger doesn’t show.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

100

145

Total granted

$8.5M

$5.2M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+16%

+31%

Still filing today

55%

10%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $780k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureHuman ServicesCrime & LegalCivil RightsCommunity ImprovementYouth DevelopmentOther

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

NEW SANCTUARY MOVEMENT OF PHILADELPHIA
4× · 2021–2024 · $267k · revenue +10%
Founded in 2007 as a faith-rooted immigrant justice organization, New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia has grown from a grassroots coalition into a recognized frontline advocate — expanding its programs, formalizing its nonprofit status, and deepening its community roots through the Promotores leadership model.
NS
NATIONALITIES SERVICE CENTER OF PHILADELPHIA
3× · 2021–2023 · $240k · revenue +95%
PENNSYLVANIA VOICE
3× · 2021–2024 · $210k · revenue +116%

Funded once

BA
BREAD AND ROSES COMMUNITY FUND
one grant, 2018 · $235k
M
MAP
one grant, 2023 · $201k
HP
HIAS Pennsylvania
one grant, 2021 · $155k

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

Activities, outputs, outcomes

Most can say what their work is for. Few can show it changed. Click an area to step through it.

Of 31 organizations, 3 show a change. The rest report what they did, or only what they hope it’s for.

Click an area to read it, and step through its organizations.

Read from 31 of the 38 organizations you fund across these 5 areas— those you fund most heavily — in their own program-service reporting. Achievements are the organizations’ own.

case studies

Two relationships, up close

One you funded repeatedly and one you funded once, each traced through its own filings and the public record.

Gender Justice Fund

Conviction

Sustained conviction through a turbulent transition

Samuel S Fels Fund backed Gender Justice Fund across three consecutive years (2021–2023), committing $150,000 at a moment when that support represented as much as 10% of GJF's operating budget — meaningful capital for an organization that had just rebranded from the New Century Guild to sharpen its focus on gender equity in Philadelphia. Revenue has since contracted significantly, yet GJF's grantmaking capacity has held: in 2024 the organization launched a new strategic framework and awarded a record $591,000 to 40 grantees, with 85% of dollars reaching groups led by women, trans, or gender nonconforming individuals. Alongside Fels Fund's sustained commitment, GJF has continued to fund reproductive rights, economic justice, and transgender and non-binary communities across its portfolio.

4× · 2021–2024

Funded

$170k

You committed

10%

Peak share of budget

-76%

Their revenue since

NEW SANCTUARY MOVEMENT OF PHILADELPHIA

Funded once

Early bet on a movement now compounding

Fels Fund made a single, catalytic investment of $128,500 in New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia in 2021 — equal to nearly a quarter of NSM's budget at the time — arriving as the organization was deepening its Promotores program and expanding its network of congregational partners. In the years since, NSM's revenue has grown at a 13% compound annual rate and net assets have quadrupled, while the organization has scaled to 30 member congregations, sustained a robust legal accompaniment program for immigrant families, and graduated community members into board and staff leadership roles. The one-time grant now reads as an early vote of confidence in an organization that has steadily built both its financial base and its civic reach.

4× · 2021–2024

Funded

$267k

You committed

24%

Peak share of budget

+10%

Their revenue since

Trajectories are each organization’s own subsequent IRS filings; milestones are from the public record, linked to source. Revenue is the organization’s whole income from every source, not a return on these grants: we date what happened after a grant, and do not claim the grant caused it.

04Your field

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.

Philadelphia Area Jobs With Justice

Building support for the rights of working people through coalitions of labor and community and through public education.

Employment

Public Trust

Public Trust is a non-profit organization on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania that fosters learning, creativity, and collaboration in support of justice and equality.

Arts & Culture

Build Philly Now

Our mission is to advance bold ideas for the built environment in the City of Philadelphia and the surrounding region, with a specific focus on transformative projects and ideas in the areas of housing, infrastructure, and energy.

—

Pennsylvania United

PA United organizes and builds power across Western PA to create

Civil Rights

Emprendedores Inc

Education, arts and culture.

Arts & Culture

Philadelphia Legal Assistance Center Inc C/O the Organization

Enforcing and protecting the rights of individuals and families by providing accessible, creative, and high quality legal assistance and working collaboratively for systemic change.

Crime & Legal

Together for West Philadelphia

Together for West Philadelphia partners with healthcare systems community-based organizations, academic institutions, and public and private stakeholders to achieve equitable health outcomes for West Philadelphians.

Unclassified

Philadelphia Festival of the Arts Inc

To promote the cultural richness of philadelphia and to bring the most distinguished work in the arts to audiences in the philadelphia region

—

Philadelphia Equal Justice Center Inc

At the equal justice center, our mission is to build a more accessible and equitable civil legal system. we strive to create pathways to just outcomes and to remove barriers for all philadelphians, by empowering every member of the…

Crime & Legal

Equity Project

The Equity Project is committed to advancing racial equity through radical access. We believe every community has the right to transformative experiences creative spaces and the resources needed to reach our full potential. We build the…

—

Philadelphia Works Inc

Philadelphia works, inc. develops and manages smart workforce solutions that respond to business needs and increases economic opportunity for all philadelphia residents.

Employment

Lead Pa

Cultivating the next generation of progressive leaders across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Resolve Philadelphia Inc and the most unlike its peers is Leeway Foundation. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 21 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 16% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

3%3/86

the rest of the field

16%

1,552/9,510

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.

05the grantee network

85 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. 85 of the 263 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

83/85

Grantees still filing

48/85

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$8,461,500Arts & Culture$1,480,500Human Services$1,125,000Civil Rights$959,500Crime & Legal$664,000Philanthropy$444,000Youth Development$390,500

Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.

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.

12 internal · 8 shared anchors

Your portfolio is already a network

Worked together in fall 2020 as allies to advocate for contract negotiations between the City of Philadelphia and the Fraternal Order of Police and against anti-blackness. It’s one of 12 direct ties among 50 of your grantees, who also cluster around 8 shared regional anchors.

Ties are read from news and organization websites, so they’re directional, not exhaustive; each links to its source.

Grantees connected

Grantee↔grantee ties

Shared anchors (2+ grantees)

214

External links

Tap any organization to trace its collaborations — shared anchors pull toward the center

min. connectionstheme41 shown · 16 ties

grantee you fund external partner named by both stated inferred

Tap any organization in the graph to trace its collaborations — or start with the strongest ties below.

Strongest grantee↔grantee ties

↔
corroborated Coalition · Joint program
↔
explicit Coalition
↔
explicit Coalition
↔
explicit Joint program
↔
explicit Coalition

Anchors several grantees share

3 grantees
3 grantees
2 grantees
2 grantees
2 grantees
2 grantees

Joint program 125Coalition 53Affiliation 27Funding 9Referral network 6Shared facility 4Fiscal sponsorship 1Collaboration 1Merger / affiliation 1

Partnerships are LLM-extracted from news and organisation websites, not from tax filings — directional, not exhaustive. Each edge links to its source; corroborated edges were named independently by both organisations.

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.

The William Penn FoundationPA110.7× affinity58 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The William Penn Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Bread and Roses Community Fund · Independence Public Media of Philadelphia Inc · The Barra Foundation Inc · The Patricia Kind Family Foundation · Henrietta Tower Wurts Memorial Foundation · Independence Foundation · The Alfred and Mary Douty Foundation · Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation · The Philadelphia Cultural Fund Inc · The Allen Hilles Fund

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 Samuel S. Fels Fund 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

29report 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

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Samuel S. Fels Fund?

Find your warmest path to Samuel S. Fels Fund 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.

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 camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines