· Private foundation
Shepher 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 $10k10 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $111k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $340k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ISRAELI-AMERICAN COUNCIL | $340,000 |
| GIFT OF LIFE | $50,000 |
| ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE DBA STAND WITH US | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE IDF | $36,000 |
| ISRAEL CHRISTIAN NEXUS | $25,000 |
| STAND BY ME | $20,000 |
| MACCABI WORLD UNION INC | $10,000 |
| PEF ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC | $10,000 |
| FREINDS OF NAHAL HAREDI | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| LARGER THAN LIFE | $5,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| OSEH CHESSED INC | $5,000 |
| KESHET CHAIM DANCE ENSEMBLE | $5,000 |
| CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 US giving — 89% of grant dollars ($8.4M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 11% that went abroad ($1.0M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $5.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
Beyond the US — 11% of all-years giving ($1.0M)
1 country, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Shepher Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 69% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 63% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 13 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- IEISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE7× · 2019–2025 · $405k · revenue +52%
- CFCentral Fund of Israel3× · 2018–2024 · $155k · revenue +145%
FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES5× · 2020–2025 · $148k · revenue +211%
Funded once
- MOMUNICIPALITY OF BAT YAMone grant, 2018 · $1.0M
- FOFRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INCone grant, 2024 · $36k · revenue 0%
HORIZONS GREATER BOSTON INCone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +9%
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.
Connect israel is a life-long program that aims to strengthen the gap between american jews and israelis through business, creative teamwork, and developing personal relationships.
Educational information regarding Israel and the Middle East.
Support jewry in Israel
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Birthright Israel Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Dmb Fund. 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 25 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 53 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 ISRAELI-AMERICAN COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL CHRISTIAN NEXUS ↗
- Who funds Central Fund of Israel ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds STAND BY ME INC ↗
- Who funds THE GIFT OF LIFE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds KESHET CHAIM DANCE ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF SHANTI HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SHAILI ORG ↗
- Who funds Larger Than Life - LA Family ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS GREATER BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds OSEH CHESSED INC ↗
- Who funds MACCABI WORLD UNION INC ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MUSEUM LA ↗
- Who funds MERONA LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DEDHAM COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Kadima Hebrew Academy ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL ZIONIST ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds the DMB Fund ↗
- Who funds MACCABI USA 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 Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Saidoff Foresight Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Israeli-American Council · The Milstein Family Foundation · Jewish Federation Council of Greater La · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Shepher 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 Shepher Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Shepher 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.