· Private foundation
The Derfner 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
- Under $10k3 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $585k
- $50k–250k21 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+7 grants · $5.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MOUNT SINAI DEPT OF SURGERY | $1,500,000 |
| HEBREW HOME FOR THE AGED | $1,000,000 |
| HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY | $1,000,000 |
| SOUTHAMPTON HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $550,000 |
| GREEN 4 KIDS | $500,000 |
| BABY2BABY | $250,000 |
| KESSLER FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| RED AUTISMO FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| BASSER RESEARCH CENTER FOR BRCA | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $100,000 |
| UJA FEDERATION OF NY | $100,000 |
| METROPOLITAN COUNCIL ON JEWISH POVERTY | $100,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR GENDER SPECIFIC MEDICINE INC | $100,000 |
| MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE | $100,000 |
| MULTIPLE MYELOMA RESEARCH FDN | $75,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $2.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +22% since the first grant, against -11% for the ones you funded once.
96 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 42 since wound down; 5 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $52k 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
- TMTHE MIRMAN SCHOOL FOR GIFTED CHILDREN7× · 2017–2023 · $2.6M · revenue +64%
- TSTHE SOUTHAMPTON HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC7× · 2017–2024 · $2.4M · revenue +339%
- KFKessler Foundation Inc7× · 2018–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +28%
Funded once
ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAIgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +41%- SBSTONY BROOK SOUTHAMPTON HOSPITALone grant, 2020 · $100k
- MCMONROE CARELL JR CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AT VANDERBILTone grant, 2017 · $25k
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.
Mjhs health system is a charitable not-for-profit established to support the activities of affiliated organizations. mjhs is built on the core values of compassion, dignity and respect, first established by the four brooklyn ladies in…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To provide hospice services on both an inpatient and outpatient basis
Mount sinai is committed to the advancement of the art and science of medicine through clinical excellence. the central mission consists of high-quality patient care and teaching conducted in an atmosphere of social concern and scholarly…
Operating as isabella center for rehabilitation and nursing care, isabella is a 705-bed not-for-profit organization that is a member of the mjhs health system family. isabella is committed to providing exceptional short-term, sub-acute…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Saint John's Health Center Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Red Autismo Foundation. 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 35 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 — 2% 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.
89 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. 89 of the 135 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 Hebrew Home for Aged at Riverdale ↗
- Who funds THE MIRMAN SCHOOL FOR GIFTED CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds THE SOUTHAMPTON HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHAREWELL ↗
- Who funds Kessler Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds BABY2BABY ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR GENDER-SPECIFIC MEDICINE INC ↗
- Who funds The Soup Kitchen Inc ↗
- Who funds GREEN-4-KIDS ↗
- Who funds American Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN NEW YORK COORDINATING COUNCIL ON JEWISH POVERTY ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Los Angeles ↗
- Who funds INSPIRE MEXICO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LAURENCE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RED AUTISMO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENGINEERING WORLD HEALTH ↗
- Who funds NICAPHOTO INC ↗
- Who funds HEARING HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wayfinder Family Services ↗
- Who funds THE BICOL CLINIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE A LIVING MEMORIAL TO THE HOLOCAUST ↗
- Who funds BRENTWOOD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRAVIS MILLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AHRC NEW YORK CITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE STOCKBRIDGE BOWL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED CEREBRAL PALSY ASSOCIATION OF NASSAU COUNTY 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: Jewish Communal Fund · The Bessemer Giving Fund · The Batchelor Foundation Inc · American Express Foundation · Leslie L Alexander Foundation Inc · Ira M Resnick Foundation Inc · California Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Enterprise Holdings 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 Derfner 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Kessler Foundation Inc — 54% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Jack and Jill Children's Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Kids in Distress Inc — 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 Derfner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Derfner 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.