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Illinois · Public charity

The Ember Foundation

THE EMBER FOUNDATION exists to aid, support, and promote the jewish faith and cultural observances through financial support and instruction to individuals, torah outreach organizations, and others.

$392k
Granted FY2024(still arriving)
8
Grants FY2024
7
Organizations funded FY2023
0%
First-time grantees FY2023
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2024
$7,000
Largest grant, FY2024
$275,000
Organizations funded a year
7 to 9
FY2017 to FY2023
States reached, FY2024
2
Total assets, FY2024
$1.4M

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2023, 0% of the organizations The Ember Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22’23
RenewedFirst-time
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.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY2024still arriving8$392k0%
FY20237$328k0%
FY20229$617k11%
FY20218$366k0%
FY20207$290k0%
FY20197$368k0%
FY20187$359k0%
FY20179$381kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

Religion$3.0MEducation$75kHuman Services$34k

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2017 to FY2024, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Torahub$2,583,5039n/a
Project 613 Nfp$126,754812%
Jet - Jewish Education Team Inc$75,41794%
Jem Inc$65,67292%
J-Life Outreach Inc$64,93894%
Agudath Israel of Illinois$63,74290%
Yisraelink Organization Inc$61,19294%
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America$41,6756n/a
Associated Talmud Torahs of Chicago$8,1251n/a

Plus 1 recipient with no EIN on record ($10k), not named here.

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.

Morasha Olami IncAj & Sl Stern Family …Jewish Federation of …National Philanthropi…Fidelity Investments …Donor Advised Charita…Amazonsmile Foundation
Morasha Olami IncNJ15.7× affinity5 shared granteesties to 6 of 6Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Morasha Olami Inc · Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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.

Compare The Ember Foundation with peer funders

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Ember Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Ember 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.

About The Ember Foundation

How much does The Ember Foundation give?
The Ember Foundation reported 8 grants totaling $392,000 in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 7 and 9 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.
What does The Ember Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Religion (96%), Education (2%), Human Services (1%).
Who are The Ember Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Torahub ($2.6M), Project 613 Nfp ($127k), Jet - Jewish Education Team Inc ($75k).
Does The Ember Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2023, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Which funders back the same organizations as The Ember Foundation?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Morasha Olami Inc, Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation, Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.
Where is The Ember Foundation based?
The Ember Foundation is based in IL.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $399k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2024, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Ember’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