· Private foundation
The Bender 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k25 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $177k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF THACHER STATE PARK | $25,000 |
| ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY AND ART | $15,500 |
| CONNECT CENTER FOR YOUTH | $15,000 |
| UNDERGROUND RAILROAD EDUCATION CENTER | $15,000 |
| UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| WATERVLIET CIVIC CHEST INC | $15,000 |
| STEAMER NO10 THEATRE INC | $15,000 |
| DESTROYER ESCORT HISTORICAL MUSEUM (USS SLATER) | $11,000 |
| CAPITAL DISTRICT WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT & RESOURCE CENTER (WERC) | $10,250 |
| PALACE THEATRE PALACE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER INC | $10,000 |
| NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| GIRLS INCORPORATED OF THE GREATER CAPITAL REGION | $10,000 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF NORTHEASTERN NEW YORK INC | $10,000 |
| ALBANY CENTER GALLERIES INC | $8,250 |
| THE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM AT SARATOGA | $7,600 |
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 (FY17–25, $129k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 89% 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.
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 +51% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
61 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 37 since wound down; 14 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, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $116k 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
- AIALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY AND ART9× · 2017–2025 · $111k · revenue +42%
- MHMOHAWK HUDSON LAND CONSERVANCY7× · 2018–2025 · $98k · revenue +151%
- UAUNIVERSITY AT ALBANY FOUNDATION6× · 2018–2025 · $75k · revenue +126%
Funded once
- ACALBANY CAN CODE INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +81%
- TFTHE FRIENDS OF PRUYN HOUSEone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue -6%
- LVLITERACY VOLUNTEERS OF RENSSELAER COUNTYone grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue 0%
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.
We preserve, revitalize, and support the commercial district, creating a center of choiceby collaborating with residents and stakeholders to foster a successful community.
Saratoga arts was established to enrich the region by cultivating a vibrant arts community and by ensuring that the arts are accessible to all.
CNY Arts' mission is to promote, support, and celebrate arts and culture in Central New York.
Acap works in partnership with families and communities to empower people to achieve economic self-sufficiency and an improved quality of life.
The mission of capitalize albany corporation is to facilitate strategic economic development and stimulate transformative investment throughout the city of albany, making new york's capital a vibrant place to thrive.
The everson museum of art of syracuse and onondaga county is a not-for-profit organization located in syracuse, new york. its stated purpose is to conduct cultural, charitable, and educational activities. the museum's support comes…
Support regional economic development in new york's 14 northernmost counties
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
The museum provides exposure to the visual arts, encourages awareness, participation, and enjoyment of the visual arts, and enhances the quality of life in the surrounding area.
Albany Barn is dedicated to providing a sustainable creative arts incubator and community arts center in Albany and Schenectady NY a place for artists to live, work and inspire.
New york focus is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering state and local politics in the empire state.(continued on scheduleo)launched in october of 2020, new york focus aims to help make government more transparent by publishing…
To restore, promote, and maintain the character and viability of downtown Albany and to improve the quality of life and overall image for those who live, work and visit the Capital City
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Albany Academies Inc and the most unlike its peers is Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. 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 37 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
82 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. 82 of the 126 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 ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY AND ART ↗
- Who funds MOHAWK HUDSON LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE GREATER CAPITAL REGION INC ↗
- Who funds WATERVLIET CIVIC CHEST INC ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE AND IMMIGRANT SUPPORT SERVICES OF EMMAUS INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC ALBANY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH FX INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHAKER HERITAGE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds BABY INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ALBANY ACADEMIES INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC CHERRY HILL ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL FOOD BANK OF NORTHEASTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds ALBANY CENTER GALLERIES INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL ROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TROY SAVINGS BANK MUSIC HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE WOMANS CLUB OF ALBANY INC ↗
- Who funds THE COHOES CONNECT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EMPIRE STATE YOUTH ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH PARTNERSHIP FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds HOMELESS AND TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY OF THE CAPITAL DISTRICT INC ↗
- Who funds The RED Bookshelf Inc ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY CAPITAL DISTRICT INC ↗
- Who funds WMHT EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Albany County Historical Association ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CAPITAL AREA ↗
- Who funds MARIA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS CENTER OF THE CAPITAL REGION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL DISTRICT WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT & RESOURCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DESTROYER-ESCORT HISTORICAL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds STEAMER 10 THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds ALBANY CAN CODE INC ↗
- Who funds Scenic Hudson 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 Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region Inc · Review Foundation · Price Chopper's Golub Foundation · United Way of the Greater Capital Region · The Troy Savings Bank Charitable Fo · Carl E Touhey Foundation · John D Picotte Family Foundation (Formerly Equinox Foundation) · David & Candace Weir Foundation · Kiwi Foundation · Pioneer Bank Charitable Foundation · JM McDonald Foundation Inc · Mvp Health Plan 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 The Bender 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.
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% 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 The Bender Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bender Family 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.