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Plinth

· Private foundation

Stephen A & Nina B Schafer 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.

$12k
Granted FY2025still arriving
12
Grants FY2025still arriving
8
States reached
$4k
Largest
01What you fund
0188% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20202025.

Religion$36kArts & Culture$30kInternational$9kEducation$6kEnvironment$1kPublic Benefit$1kCivil Rights$425Health$336Other$0
02FY2025 · 12 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$1,000
Median grant
8
States reached
$395k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Congregation Beth Am$3,800
Free Library of Phila$1,500
Impact 100$1,250
St Thomas Hebrew Congregation$1,200
HIAS$1,000
Congregation Beth Emeth$1,000
Friends of the Frost Place$1,000
WHYY$500
Individual grant recipient$100
Connecticut College$100
Norwich Public Library$100
National Resource Defense Council$100
02The need
03

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.

show:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 17% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%Congregation Beth Emeth: $2k → 10%Union of Concerned Scientists: $100 → 12%Theatre Ariel: $500 → 7%WHYY: $500 → 9%ArtWell: $500 → 22%Environmental Working Group: $1k → 14%Southern Poverty Law Center: $200 → 18%Connecticut College: $100 → 9%Virgilio Haiku Association: $100 → 12%Norwich Public Library: $100 → 9%Singerly Fire Co: $100 → 10%Congregation Beth Emeth: $1k → 10%Congregation Beth Or: $100 → 7%Ceasefire PA Education Fund: $500 → 22%Common Cause Education Fund: $1k → 14%Connecticut College: $100 → 9%Virgilio Haiku Association: $100 → 12%Singerly Fire Co: $100 → 10%The Frost Place: $7k → 10%Congregation Beth Emeth: $1k → 10%Impact 100: $2k → 7%ArtWell: $500 → 22%Academy of American Poets: $100 → 17%National Resource Defense Council: $100 → 14%The Frost Place: $6k → 10%Congregation Beth Emeth: $1k → 10%Impact 100: $1k → 7%ArtWell: $500 → 22%Joint Distribution Committee: $500 → 17%The Frost Place: $6k → 10%Congregation Beth Emeth: $1k → 10%Congregation Beth Am: $5k → 7%ArtWell: $500 → 22%ACLU Foundation: $200 → 17%Friends of the Frost Place: $1k → 10%Impact 100: $1k → 7%WHYY: $200 → 22%Congregation Beth Am: $5k → 7%Impact 100: $1k → 7%Free Library of Philadelphia: $3k → 22%Congregation Beth Am: $4k → 7%Free Library of Phila: $2k → 22%Impact 100: $1k → 7%Congregation Beth Am: $4k → 7%Impact 100: $1k → 7%Congregation Beth Am: $3k → 7%WHYY: $220 → 22%Congregation Beth Am: $1k → 7%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

VT
NH
NY
MA
PA
NJ
CT
CA
MD
DE
DC
AL

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

91%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$84k · 18 repeat orgs$9k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +65% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.

18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

18
21

Total granted

$84k
$8k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+65%
+14%

Still filing today

44%
67%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k went to new ones.

50%100%’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’20’21’22’23’24’25
Arts & CultureEducationHealthInternationalEnvironmentCivil RightsOther

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

  • AC
    Artwell Collaborative Inc
    4× · 2020–2024 · $2k · revenue +103%
  • WHYY INC
    3× · 2020–2025 · $920 · revenue +36%
  • CC
    CONNECTICUT COLLEGE
    6× · 2020–2025 · $600 · revenue +22%

Funded once

  • FL
    FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION
    one grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +11%
  • CC
    COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUNDgraduated
    one grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue +100%
  • EW
    ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP
    one grant, 2024 · $1k · revenue 0%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Albright College

As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.

Education
2
President and Fellows of Harvard College

Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.

Education
3
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…

Science & Tech
4
The Trustees of Princeton University

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…

Education
5
Lehigh University

The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…

Education
6
American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Founded in 1780, the american academy of arts and sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together "to…

Social Science
7
Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

8
Wilson College

Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.

Education
9
American Jewish Committee

AJC's mission is to enhance the wellbeing of the Jewish people and Israel, and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. In pursuit of this mission, AJC advances democratic principles, fights…

Civil Rights
10
University of New Haven

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…

Education
11
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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.

Education
12
Sarah Lawrence College

At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Theatre Ariel. 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.

← shrinkinggrowing →↓ leaning in → pulling backsteadyGovernment Accountability R…Legal Aid & Immigration Ser…Environmental Advocacy Orga…Cancer Support OrganizationsFaith-Based Liberal Arts Co…Jewish Community FederationsCommunity Arts OrganizationsPublic Library Support
the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side
Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number22%4%<5yr14%0%5–10yr19%7%10–20yr16%25%20–35yr13%18%35–55yr16%46%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value22%4%<5yr14%0%5–10yr19%1%10–20yr16%39%20–35yr13%14%35–55yr16%43%55yr+

The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.0%0/28
the rest of the field
13%
240,396/1,819,537

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.

04the grantee network

25 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 25 of the 44 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
25/25
Grantees still filing
20/25
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Congregation Beth Am — $21,706 · OtherCongregation Beth AmThe Frost Place — $18,500 · OtherThe Frost PlaceImpact 100 — $8,250 · OtherImpact 100St Thomas Hebrew Congregation — $7,254 · OtherSt Thomas Hebrew CongregationCONGREGATION BETH EMETH — $6,312 · OtherCONGREGATION BETH EMETHFree Library of Phila — $6,000 · OtherFree Library of PhilaFREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION — $3,000 · Other+19 more — $4,412 · Other+19 moreHIAS INC — $8,500 · InternationalHIAS INCThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc — $500 · InternationalThe America…+1 more — $100 · InternationalArtwell Collaborative Inc — $2,000 · EducationCONNECTICUT COLLEGE — $600 · EducationTRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA — $150 · EducationMIGHTY WRITERS — $100 · Education+1 more — $36 · EducationFriends of the Frost Place Inc — $1,000 · Arts & CultureWHYY INC — $920 · Arts & CultureTheatre Ariel — $500 · Arts & CultureTHE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS INC — $200 · Arts & CultureTINY DYNAMITE INC — $150 · Arts & Culture+1 more — $18 · Arts & CultureENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP — $1,000 · EnvironmentENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED — $175 · EnvironmentCOMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND — $1,000 · Public BenefitAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC — $225 · Civil Rights
Other$75,434International$9,100Education$2,886Arts & Culture$2,788Environment$1,175Public Benefit$1,000Civil Rights$225

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetHIAS INC — $8,500 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetFREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION — $3,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetArtwell Collaborative Inc — $2,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetCOMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND — $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP — $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetWHYY INC — $920 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetCONNECTICUT COLLEGE — $600 over 6y, 0.0% of budgetThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc — $500 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC — $225 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetTHE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS INC — $200 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC — $200 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED — $175 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetTRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA — $150 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetTINY DYNAMITE INC — $150 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetLANKENAU MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION — $100 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetMIGHTY WRITERS — $100 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC — $100 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetAMERICAN SEPHARDI FEDERATION — $50 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCORPORATION OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE — $36 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetLSB LEAKEY FDTN FOR RESEARCH RELATED TO HUMAN ORIGINS BEHAVIOR AND SURVIVAL — $36 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetAmerican Association for Cancer Research Inc — $18 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCOLORECTAL CANCER ALLIANCE — $18 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetMain Line Art Center — $18 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

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.

Vanguard Charitable Endowment ProgramPA8.5× affinity6 shared granteesties to 4 of 4Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Stephen A & Nina B Schafer 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 10%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from governmentmedian 88%
  • Hias Inc88% of income from government
  • Connecticut College0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
1rely on government for over half their income
typical government reliance, FY2025

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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 44 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph