· Private foundation
Adler Schermer Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RIVERMONT COLLEGIATE | $300,000 |
| THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| SPRING FORWARD LEARNING CENTER | $25,000 |
| ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER | $20,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 86% 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 +46% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- RCRIVERMONT COLLEGIATE3× · 2019–2024 · $800k · revenue +20%
- SUSTATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $560k · revenue +13%
- MAMUSIC ASSOCIATES OF ASPEN INC6× · 2017–2023 · $205k · revenue +141%
Funded once
- ACAMAZON CONSERVATION ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +33%
- GPGENESIS PHILANTHROPYone grant, 2019 · $12k
STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +112%
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.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
To provide essential value to our members, their careers, our partners, and the public, asce will: facilitate the advancement of technology; encourage and provide the tools for lifelong learning; promote professionalism and the profession;…
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,…
Agu's mission is to advance and support an inclusive community of earth and space scientists and partners dedicated to discovery and solutions to societal challenges. agu seeks to catalyze discovery and solutions to scientific and societal…
To lead, serve and collaborate to mobilize enduring philanthropy for a better arizona.
The american astronomical society (aas), established in 1899, is the major organization of professional astronomers in north america. the basic objective of the aas is to promote the advancement of astronomy and closely related branches of…
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The santa fe institute is a transdisciplinary research community that expands the boundaries of scientific understanding. its aim is to discover, comprehend, and communicate the common fundamental principles in complex physical,…
See schedule ouniversity corporation for atmospheric research (ucar), on behalf of, and in cooperation with its member university members, is engaged in the management of long-term atmospheric and related research and educational…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Figge Art Museum. 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 49 years old; the field is 38. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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 57 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 RIVERMONT COLLEGIATE ↗
- Who funds STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ASSOCIATES OF ASPEN INC ↗
- Who funds QUAD CITY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds NAHANT MARSH EDUCATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Land Institute ↗
- Who funds ASPEN VALLEY HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Arizona Foundation ↗
- Who funds FIGGE ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds ASPEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMAZON CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMAZON BIODIVERSITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds SPRING FORWARD LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds Aspen Jewish Center ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds ASPEN CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Mary Institute and St Louis Country Day School ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds CAMP NEBAGAMON ↗
- Who funds Pathfinders ↗
- Who funds THE MOOG CENTER FOR DEAF EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Community Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHERN ARIZONA ↗
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 Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Marie H Bechtel Charitable Trust · Rauch Family Foundation I Inc · Hubbell-Waterman Fndn · The Rock Island Community Foundation · Scott County Regional Authority · Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona · Quad Cities Golf Classic Charitable Foundation · Quad Cities Community Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Adler Schermer 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 Adler Schermer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Adler Schermer 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.