· Private foundation
Sommer Family Foundation Inc
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| APPLEGATE REGIONAL THEATRE INC | $8,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| MARIE SELBY BOTANICAL GARDE | $4,000 |
| SUNCOAST HUMANE SOCIETY | $4,000 |
| BRISTOL FIRE DEPARTMENT | $3,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE VENICE PUBLIC LIBRARY | $3,000 |
| MIAMI UNIVERSITY | $2,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO | $2,500 |
| DENSION UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| DOWNS SYNDROME CONNECTION OF THE BAY AREA | $2,000 |
| ST JOHN'S PRESBYTERIAN ATTN CEMETERY FUND | $2,000 |
| WHITE LAKE SAILING SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| MIDDLESEX SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| COLGATE UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| LEMON BAY CONSERVANCY | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
71 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2025, 35 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- DSDOWN SYNDROME CONNECTION OF THE BAY AREA9× · 2017–2025 · $21k · revenue +56%
- SHSUNCOAST HUMANE SOCIETYINC8× · 2018–2025 · $20k · revenue +48%
- DUDENISON UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2025 · $20k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- DPDES PLAINES WETLANDS CONSERVANCY INCone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -40%
CORPORATION OF GONZAGA UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +12%- MSMiddlesex School Annual Fundone grant, 2017 · $3k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
University of the sciences prepares students to become leaders, innovators, and skilled practitioners in the sciences, the health professions, and related disciplines. we deliver excellence in teaching, research, and service through a safe…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Sheridan Shore Sailing School. 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 52 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 102 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 Applegate Regional Theater Inc ↗
- Who funds WELLS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DOWN SYNDROME CONNECTION OF THE BAY AREA ↗
- Who funds SUNCOAST HUMANE SOCIETYINC ↗
- Who funds DENISON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Venice Public Library Inc ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AND CHILDREN'S HORIZONS INC ↗
- Who funds MIDDLESEX SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds COLGATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LANDMARK COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds CHORAL ARTS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds LEMON BAY CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds COTTEY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Ducks Unlimited Inc ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Maple School PTO ↗
- Who funds CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WHITE LAKE SAILING SCHOOL 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: AbbVie Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Sommer 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- Applegate Regional Theater Inc — 4% of income from government
- Community Rowing Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Landmark College Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Choate Rosemary Hall Foundation Incorporated — 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 Sommer Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Sommer 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.