· Private foundation
Sy Syms 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CONTRIBUTIONS 512024 - 4302025 - DETAIL AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST | $2,362,380 |
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 (FY21–24, $303k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 77% 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.
52 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 52 since wound down; 1 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.4M 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
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INC4× · 2021–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +13%- AFAmerican Friends of Israel Philharmonic Orchestra3× · 2022–2024 · $405k · revenue +19%
PROJECT SUNSHINE INC4× · 2021–2024 · $240k · revenue +41%
Funded once
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue +167%- PAPAN AMERICAN CENTERone grant, 2024 · $200k
CITY HARVEST INCone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue -36%
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.
To bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
The mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
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.
Established in 1971, the mission of the new york foundation for the arts (nyfa) is to empower artists in all disciplines, as well as cultural workers, to achieve success on their own terms by providing critical support, resources, and…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
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…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ms Foundation for Women Inc and the most unlike its peers is Museum of the City of New York. 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 43 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.
38 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. 38 of the 93 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 NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds WNET ↗
- Who funds PEN AMERICAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds American Friends of Israel Philharmonic Orchestra ↗
- Who funds BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SUNSHINE INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S E-NEWS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds CITYMEALS-ON-WHEELS ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds TIKVA CORP ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds LEGAL MOMENTUM ↗
- Who funds Girl Scouts of Greater NY Inc ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH WOMEN'S ARCHIVE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS GLOBAL HEALTH FUND 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: The Ford Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Sy Syms 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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 Sy Syms Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sy Syms 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.