· Private foundation
Shear Family Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k21 grants · $103k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $230k
- $50k–250k29 grants · $3.1M
- $250k+14 grants · $5.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DONOR ADVISED FUNDS- CHARLES SCHWAB | $951,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH | $600,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC | $600,000 |
| AMERIAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FUND | $450,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA LAS VEGAS | $400,000 |
| JEWISH NATIONAL FUND | $380,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO | $350,000 |
| DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY & COMMUNITY SERVICES OF PITTSBURGH | $300,000 |
| GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOODBANK | $300,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| PALM BEACH COUNTY FOODBANK | $250,000 |
| ALPERT JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES | $250,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES | $250,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES | $231,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $2.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Shear Family Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +43% for the ones you funded once.
106 repeat relationships — 58 still active in FY2024, 48 since wound down; 17 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $735k 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 PITTSBURGH8× · 2017–2024 · $11M · revenue +44%- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC8× · 2017–2024 · $4.6M · revenue +169%
- JFJEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICE OF PITTSBURGH8× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +102%
Funded once
- CSCHARLES SCHWAB CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2023 · $656k
- UCUMC CHILDREN'S HOSPITALone grant, 2017 · $515k
- AIAMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2017 · $250k
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.
Our mission is to solve hunger in central pennsylvania by ensuring that everyone struggling with hunger has access to enough wholesome food every day. we will achieve this bold goal with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and…
To promote dietary changes to build a healthy, equitable, humane, and environmentally-sustainable food system.
PHILABUNDANCE WAS FOUNDED IN 1984 WITH THE SIMPLE BELIEF THAT NO ONE SHOULD GO HUNGRY WHILE HEALTHY FOOD GOES TO WASTE. OUR MISSION IS TO DRIVE HUNGER FROM OUR COMMUNITIES TODAY AND TO END HUNGER FOR GOOD. We have a commitment to always…
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
Feeding pennsylvania is the partner state association of feeding america food banks. it is our mission to promote and aid our members in securing food and other resources to reduce hunger and food insecurity for their communities and…
To encourage and motivate the making of gifts and donations by deed, will, or otherwise, for the advancement, promotion, extension, and maintenance of the various causes and objectives fostered by the humane pennsylvania.
Support the hebrew univ. of jerusalem, israel's foremost center of higher edu. & research.
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
We serve as a champion for addressing the root causes of hunger, delivering neighbor-centric solutions, and fostering collaborative partnerships across all sectors of society for New Jersey.
Humane pennsylvania empowers the people in our communities to increase their capacity to care for animals so that all animals are healthy, safe, and treated humanely.
Jewish family and children's service of minneapolis provides essential services to people of all ages and backgrounds to sustain healthy relationships, ease suffering and offer support in times of need.
The zoological society of pittsburgh is dedicated to being a leader in, and significant contributor to, the conservation of endangered and threatened species. the society provides an enjoyable family experience that fosters understanding,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Hills Community Outreach Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mckeesport Agape Center. 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 29 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
122 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. 122 of the 188 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 PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LEKET ISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICE OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF IR DAVID INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds ONE MIND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL SPORT CENTER FOR THE DISABLED ↗
- Who funds THREE SQUARE ↗
- Who funds Palm Beach County Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds INTERMOUNTAIN HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BERNARD ZELL ANSHE EMET DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The Palm Beach Police and Fire Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah ↗
- Who funds SECURE COMMUNITY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds GROW PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ERADICATE HATE GLOBAL SUMMIT ↗
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 Pittsburgh Foundation · Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh · Richard King Mellon Foundation · The Heinz Endowments · Eqt Foundation · Margaret Raphael Foundation · Hillman Family Foundations · The Grable Foundation · The Cigna Group Foundation · The Fine Foundation · Peter C Dozzi Family Foundation Aka Eugene Dozzi Charitable Foundation · The Burke Family 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 Shear Family Foundation Inc 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.
- All Faiths Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Palm Beach County Food Bank Inc — 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 Shear Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Shear Family 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.