· Private foundation
Sperling Family Charitable 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
63% of Sperling Family Charitable Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Combined Jewish Philanthropies Of Greater Boston Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 6 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Sperling Family Charitable Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 8 organizations, $1M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $7k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $85k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $547k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL - SPERLING FAMILY EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP PRO | $500,000 |
| TEMPLE SHIR TIKVA | $100,000 |
| BROAD INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| SOCIAL FINANCE | $100,000 |
| TEMPLE SHIR TIKVA | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $72,000 |
| ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE DBA STANDWITHUS | $21,000 |
| CHABAD OF PUERTO RICO | $18,000 |
| NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION | $18,000 |
| CHABAD OF DOWNTOWN BOSTON | $18,000 |
| BOCH CENTER (THE WANG CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC) | $10,000 |
| CHABAD OF CHARLESTON | $7,200 |
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, $680k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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.
20 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $61k 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
DUKE UNIVERSITY5× · 2017–2021 · $2.7M · revenue +51%
Social Finance Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $650k · revenue +748%- TBThe Broad Institute Inc5× · 2018–2025 · $585k · revenue +89%
Funded once
- DUDuke Uiversity Librarieone grant, 2017 · $175k
- TUThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museumone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue -11%
- BFBOSTON FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $100k
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 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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
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…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Organization's mission bentley university believes good business can impact more than the bottom line - it can change the world. bentley is a community of future business leaders who will deliver value in the marketplace and lasting…
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.
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
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…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Family Service of Metrowest Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Stepping Stones Foundation. 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 32 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 50 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 DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc ↗
- Who funds Social Finance Inc ↗
- Who funds The Broad Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BELL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds THE BRIDGESPAN GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE ONE LOVE FOUNDATION IN HONOR OF YEARDLEY LOVE INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Purdue Research Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VIA ART FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP HARBOR VIEW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD VILLAGES INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS WONDERFUND INC ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHABAD OF CHARLESTON INC ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 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: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Eastern Bank Foundation · Fidelity Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Sperling Family Charitable 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Neighborhood Villages Inc — 33% of income from government
- The Broad Institute Inc — 19% of income from government
- Social Finance Inc — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Inc — 2% of income from government
- Camp Harbor View Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Baseball Inc — 1% of income from government
- Year Up 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.
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