· Private foundation
Steven & Ilene Berger Family 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
53% of Steven & Ilene Berger Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $80k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $200,000 |
| AMERICAN TECHNION SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| TEMPLE BETH HILLEL | $50,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA | $25,000 |
| BENCHMARK SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| KINNEY CENTER | $20,000 |
| JEWISH NATIONAL FUND | $10,000 |
| HEBREW FREE LOAN SOCIETY OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA | $5,000 |
| JACK M BARRACK HEBREW ACADEMY | $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 human-services grants (FY24–24, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +694% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
4 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down; 3 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- ATAMERICAN TECHNION SOCIETY6× · 2020–2025 · $341k
- BSBenchmark School4× · 2021–2025 · $86k · revenue +23%
- TBTEMPLE BETH HILLEL2× · 2021–2025 · $58k
Funded once
- JFJEWISHER FEDERATION OF GREATHER PHILADELPHIAone grant, 2021 · $20k
- SJSAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITYone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -32%
- TBTHE BARN AT SPRING BROOK FARM INCone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -10%
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 university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The abraham joshua heschel school is an independent jewish day school which includes students from a wide range of jewish backgrounds, practices and beliefs. (see schedule o for continuation)
Shalom school's mission is to provide each child with an outstanding education in a nurturing environment that is academically excellent, inclusive, innovative, and inspired by jewish values and traditions.
Philadelphia jewish film and medias mission is to educate and engage diverse philadelphia communities, jewish and non-jewish alike, by presenting world-class film premieres, repertory cinema, and associated programs that are inspired by…
The weitzman national museum of american jewish history, on independence mall in philadelphia, presents educational programs and experiences that preserve, explore, and celebrate the history of jews in america. its purpose is to connect…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Family & Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia and the most unlike its peers is Sharing Excess. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 20 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 TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds Benchmark School ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds SHARING EXCESS ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE BARN AT SPRING BROOK FARM INC ↗
- Who funds MERONA LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JACK M BARRACK HEBREW ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HEBREW FREE LOAN SOCIETY OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LIBI INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH POLICY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MESIVTA HIGH SCHOOL OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
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 Federation of Greater Philadelphia · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · 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 Steven & Ilene Berger 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.
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.