· Private foundation
The Howard Ross Family 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Friendship Circle International | $8,800 |
| Turning Pointe Autism Foundation | $2,275 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| Susan G Komen Foundation | $650 |
| Jewish Sacred Society | $250 |
| PlayThinks | $250 |
| Friedman Place | $175 |
| Chicago Botanical Garden | $155 |
| (Congregation) Beis Medrash Mikor Hachaim | $150 |
| Congregation KINS | $150 |
| The Hebron Fund | $100 |
| Torah Anytime | $45 |
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 (FY20–24, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 15% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 4 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $995 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
- FCFRIENDSHIP CIRCLE INTERNATIONAL INC4× · 2021–2024 · $24k · revenue +11%
- TPTURNING POINTE AUTISM FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $13k · revenue +72%
- CLCHAI LIFELINE INC2× · 2020–2021 · $9k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $800
- STShari Tzdek Miskan Yair Congregationone grant, 2023 · $700
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGOone grant, 2023 · $650 · revenue +2%
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.
The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
To promote and foster the creation of a zionist intellectual infrastructure for the state of israel, the development of a jewish national culture, and the establishment and promotion of intellectual and economic liberty.
Keren hayeshivot trust supports religious institutions of higher education in the united states and israel to raise the level of torah and halachic observance in the sephardic orthodox jewish community.
Believing that every jewish child needs and deserves to grow up in a stable and healthy home environment, and that the fabric of that home is woven from material, emotional and religious threads, one family chicago is committed to…
Keren hayeshivot fund supports religious institutions of higher education in the united states and israel to raise the level of torah and halachic observance in the sephardic orthodox jewish community.
The primary exempt purpose of the organization is to advocate, teach, and promote the study and practice of orthodox judaism, supervise kosher food production worldwide, provide a beth din court of rabbis for interpretation of jewish law,…
To promote and support jewish religious charitable and educational activities in israel & usa.
Support of tzohar-a school for special needs children located in israel
To promote the furtherance of jewish religious and rabbinic education on a college and graduate level in israel and to increase the dissemination of scholarly research works in the fields of torah, talmud and halacha.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Agudath Israel of America and the most unlike its peers is Rails to Trails Conservancy. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 31 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 58 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 FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINTE AUTISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds PLAYTHINKS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MEZUZAH AND MITZVAH CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds SHALVA INC ↗
- Who funds HEBRON FUND INC ↗
- Who funds KEHILLAH JEWISH EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS ↗
- Who funds The Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Israel Magen Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH SACRED SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RAILS TO TRAILS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds CANCER WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds MAOT CHITIM OF GREATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds JUST ONE LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO GATEWAY GREEN COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LIBENU ↗
- Who funds GENERAL ISRAEL ORPHAN HOME FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
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: Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Bitton Family Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Arthur & Sally Dordek Charitable Foundation · Elliott and Ronni Charitable Fdn · Todd a and Raphaela Stern Family Foundation · Noah Wolff Family Foundation Inc · The Novick Family Foundation · Lev Zahav NFP · Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago · Walder 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 Howard Ross 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.
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 Howard Ross Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Howard Ross 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.