How much does The Bernhill Fund give?

The Bernhill Fund reported 7 grants totaling $107,500 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 9 and 64 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Bernhill Fund fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (51%), Public Benefit (18%), Education (13%).

Who are The Bernhill Fund's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Leo Baeck Institute Inc ($236k), Studio in a School Association Inc ($210k), Yale University ($118k).

Does The Bernhill Fund fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 20% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Bernhill Fund accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Bernhill Fund?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Jewish Communal Fund, J & Ar Foundation, Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation Inc.

Where is The Bernhill Fund based?

The Bernhill Fund is based in NY.

The Bernhill Fund

The Bernhill Fund at a glance

· Private foundation

The Bernhill Fund

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.

$108k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$35k

Largest

01What it funds

0194% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$1.1MPublic Benefit$393kEducation$292kCrime & Legal$70kHealth$66kAnimals$43kRecreation & Sports$35kInternational$32kOther$0

02FY2025 · 7 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k2 grants · $8k
$10k–50k5 grants · $100k

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$1.5M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
LEO BAECK INSTITUTE	$35,000
THE WINSTON CHURCHILL FOUNDATION	$25,000
NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO	$20,000
NAUMBURG ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS	$10,000
THE INNOCENCE PROJECT	$10,000
THE GIFT OF HOPE USA FDN	$5,000
INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION	$2,500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $76k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

88%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.9M · 58 repeat orgs$263k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +31% since the first grant, against +28% for those funded once.

58 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2025, 53 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.9M

$258k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+31%

+28%

Still filing today

66%

57%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureAnimalsEducationInternationalHealthEnvironmentOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

LB
LEO BAECK INSTITUTE INC
8× · 2017–2025 · $236k · revenue +198%
SI
STUDIO IN A SCHOOL ASSOCIATION INC
5× · 2017–2024 · $210k · revenue +43%
TN
THE NAUMBURG ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS INC
7× · 2017–2025 · $68k · revenue +21%

Funded once

WNET
one grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -9%
TO
THE OBERMEYER FOUNDATION
one grant, 2017 · $25k
TH
THE HISTORY CHURCHILL FOUNDATION
one grant, 2018 · $20k

How this is measured

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

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

The Pierpont Morgan Library

The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.

Education

Institute of Fine Arts Foundation

Supports the nyu institute of fine arts, a division of the nyu graduate school of arts and science; which is devoted to graduate teaching and research in the history of art and archeology and the conservation of works of art.

—

New York Botanical Garden

The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…

Environment

The Neue Galerie New York

Arts & Culture

The Jewish Museum

The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.

Arts & Culture

The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences

The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).

Arts & Culture

National Academy of Design

The mission of the national academy of design is to promote the fine arts in america through exhibition and education.

Education

The Trustees of the New York Society Library

The new york society library was founded in 1754 by the new york society, a civic-minded group formed in the belief that the availability of books would help the city of new york to prosper.

—

American Museum of Natural History

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."

Arts & Culture

New Museum of Contemporary Art

A center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists since 1977, which continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

Arts & Culture

New York Foundation for the Arts Inc

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…

Arts & Culture

New York School of Interior Design

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…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York Landmarks Conservancy Inc; the most unlike its peers is Wildlife Conservation Society. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

95 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 95 of the 152 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

92/95

Grantees still filing

64/95

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$1,562,423Arts & Culture$428,358Human Services$76,250Animals$39,125Youth Development$35,000International$25,050Community Improvement$16,190

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Jewish Communal FundNY25.1× affinity20 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Jewish Communal Fund · J & Ar Foundation · Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation Inc C/O Joel E Sammet & Co LLP · The Jm Kaplan Fund Inc · The New York Community Trust · The Ford Foundation · The Newburgh Institute for the Arts and Ideas · Charina Foundation Inc Richard Menschel · Ag Foundation · The William O & Carole P Bailey Family Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Bernhill Fund funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Bernhill Fund. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

6get no government money at all

21report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Bernhill Fund?

Find your warmest path to The Bernhill Fund 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.

Play a game based on Bernhill’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home