· Private foundation
The David and Sharon Bender Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k26 grants · $61k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $53k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Towers Foundation | $18,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Anti-Defamation League | $5,000 |
| Parkinson's Foundation | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| American Parkinson Disease Assoc | $5,000 |
| Planned Parenthood | $5,000 |
| Michael J Fox Foundation | $5,000 |
| Jewish Family Services of New Haven | $5,000 |
| ORT America | $5,000 |
| PKD Foundation | $5,000 |
| Women's Health Research at Yale | $2,000 |
| Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven | $1,800 |
| Jewish Family Services of New Haven | $1,800 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 80% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of The David and Sharon Bender Family Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
24 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 5 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $31k 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
- TTTHE TOWERS FOUNDATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $97k · revenue +58%
- ALANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE6× · 2020–2025 · $13k · revenue +48%
PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC2× · 2024–2025 · $10k · revenue +50%
Funded once
- OHOXFORD HOUSE OF CONNECTICUT CORPORATIONone grant, 2022 · $10k
- SCSlifka Centerone grant, 2021 · $10k
- BNBethesda Nursery Schoolone grant, 2022 · $10k
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.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
The organization's mission is to engage in non partisan analysis of u.s. foreign policy in the middle east, with special emphasis on the middle east peace process, and to present policymakers in the united states, in the region and in the…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
AJC's mission is to enhance the wellbeing of the Jewish people and Israel, and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. In pursuit of this mission, AJC advances democratic principles, fights…
The committee to protect journalists promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. cpj ensures the free flow of news and commentary by taking action wherever…
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.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
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…
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
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
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Parkinson's Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center Inc. 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 39 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 10% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 56 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 THE TOWERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER NEW HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PARKINSON DISEASE ASSOC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds PKD Foundation ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds GIFFORDS LAW CENTER TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE SOUND ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE 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 Greater New Haven · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 The David and Sharon Bender Family Foundation Inc 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood of Southern New England Inc — 10% of income from government
- Connecticut Foodshare Inc — 5% of income from government
- The Mary Wade Home Incorporated — 2% of income from government
- The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven Inc — 1% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% 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 David and Sharon Bender Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The David and Sharon Bender Family Foundation Inc 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.