· Private foundation
Sheller Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $31k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $350k
- $250k+2 grants · $770k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIV | $400,000 |
| TEMPLE UNIVERSITY | $370,000 |
| DREXEL UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| MURAL ARTS | $150,000 |
| WOMEN AGAINST ABUSE | $11,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $10,000 |
| DREXEL UNIV THOMAS KLINE SCHOOL OF LAW | $10,000 |
| CONGREGATION RODEPH SHALOM | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| MOORE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN | $2,500 |
| PATHWAY TO HOUSING PA | $2,000 |
| THREE VALLEYS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,050 |
| TRANSFORMATION TO RECOVERY | $1,000 |
| MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| ESPERANZA - ARTISTAS Y MSICOS LATINOAMERICANOS (AMLA) | $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 (FY17–24, $73k) land where the poverty rate runs at 22%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 — 13 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 3 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- TUTemple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education8× · 2017–2024 · $1.9M · revenue +5%
- DUDREXEL UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $923k · revenue +10%
PHILADELPHIA MURAL ARTS ADVOCATES INC8× · 2017–2024 · $837k · revenue +62%
Funded once
- PPPREVENTION POINT PHILADELPHIA INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $40k · revenue +94%
PENNSYLVANIA VOICEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue +174%- HTHARRIET TUBMAN MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $10k
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 philadelphia convention & visitors bureau (phlcvb) is the official tourism promotion agency for the city of philadelphia globally, and the sales and marketing agency for the pennsylvania convention center (pcc). phlcvb markets…
Pidc plans and implements economic development initiatives (see schedule o) which enhance the competitive environment, generate jobs and produce higher tax ratables throughout philadelphia.
The chamber of commerce for greater philadelphia (the chamber) brings area businesses and civic leaders together to promote growth and create opportunity in our region. our members represent eleven counties, three states, and roughly…
Whyy is the philadelphia region's leading public media provider, serving southeastern pennsylvania, southern new jersey, and all of delaware.
The organization is an affiliate within thomas jefferson university/jefferson health; a comprehensive professional university and tax-exempt integrated healthcare delivery system ("system"), with a tripartite mission of education, research…
Phillycam provides transformative opportunities for people and communities to express themselves, to learn from each other, and to produce and share media reflective of the experiences of everyday people.
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.
We develop, engage, and retain principals and system leaders who transform schools, dramatically improve student outcomes, and drive systemic change to prepare all philadelphia students for college, career, and life.
Hcif is a nonprofit organization that drives high-value health care through multi-stakeholder collaboration and initiatives to improve access to, delivery of, and experience of care. hcif dissolved during fy25-26.
Driving change from the ground up, the urban affairs coalition (uac) unites government, business, neighborhoods, and individual initiatives to improve the quality of life in the region, build wealth in urban communities, and solve emerging…
Public health management corporation (phmc) is a nonprofit public health institute that creates and sustains healthier communities. phmc uses best practices to improve community health through direct service, partnership, innovation,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children First Pa and the most unlike its peers is Transformation to Recovery. 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 36 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 64 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 Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education ↗
- Who funds DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MURAL ARTS ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds National Liberty Museum ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AGAINST ABUSE INC ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH PARTNERSHIPS ↗
- Who funds OPERA PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds PREVENTION POINT PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds PATHWAYS TO HOUSING - PA ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA VOICE ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds JEFFERSON HEALTH CORPORATION F/K/A ALBERT EINSTEIN HEALTHCARE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds WOMEN OF TOMORROW MENTOR AND SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HOME ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CAPE MAY STAGE INC ↗
- Who funds CORE COMMUNITY ORGANIZED RELIEF EFFORT ↗
- Who funds MOORE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL EMPOWERMENT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds Transformation to Recovery ↗
- Who funds Greater Philadelphia Film Office ↗
- Who funds Police Athletic League Of Philadelphia ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CRISIS TREATMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds TREE HOUSE BOOKS ↗
- Who funds Support Center for Child Advocates ↗
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 Philadelphia Foundation · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · The William Penn Foundation · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · The Daniel B and Florence E Green Foundation · Lindback Cr & Mf Foundation Tw Main · The Barra Foundation Inc · The Snider Foundation · Independence Foundation · The Patricia Kind Family Foundation · The Cigna Group Foundation · The Pew Charitable Trusts
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 Sheller 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Cape May Stage Inc — 7% of income from government
- Global Empowerment Mission 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.