· Private foundation
The Jean and Sidney Silber Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Jean and Sidney Silber Foundation Inc’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Baltimore Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Jean and Sidney Silber Foundation Inc named its own grantees at scale: 18 organizations, $460k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $290k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $155k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BALTIMORE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $50,000 |
| ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY | $50,000 |
| FUND FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE - HEART OF THE SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| MARYLAND FOOD BANK | $25,000 |
| JOB OPPORTUNITIES TASK FORCE | $20,000 |
| ARTS FOR LEARNING MARYLAND | $20,000 |
| CODE IN THE SCHOOLS | $20,000 |
| PAULS PLACE INC | $20,000 |
| CENTER FOR URBAN FAMILIES | $20,000 |
| PARKS AND PEOPLE FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| BUILD - TURNAROUND TUESDAYS | $15,000 |
| BALTIMORE CURRICULUM PROJECT | $15,000 |
| THE DYSLEXIA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–21, $90k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those 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.
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.
20 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2021, 4 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2021, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- EPENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY OF BALTIMORE CITY5× · 2017–2021 · $440k · revenue +37%
- BCBALTIMORE CURRICULUM PROJECT INC5× · 2017–2021 · $58k · revenue +289%
- CICODE IN THE SCHOOLS INC3× · 2019–2021 · $55k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- FFFUND FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE - STRONG SCHOOLS MARYLANDone grant, 2019 · $35k
- SSSTRONG SCHOOLS MARYLANDone grant, 2018 · $25k
- CACREATIVE ALLIANCE INCone grant, 2020 · $11k · revenue -23%
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.
To cultivate career advancement opportunities for local talent, facilitate talent acquisition for local employers, increase access to capital for local entrepreneurs' social ventures, and foster cross-sector collaboration to address city…
Baltimore Lab School is an innovative learning community fostering scholarship and creativity in students with different learning styles. In an environment of inquiry and hands-on exploration, Baltimore Lab School students learn to…
The mission of The Ingenuity Project is to prepare and launch the next diverse generation of nationally competitive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) leaders from Baltimore City Public Schools.
Baltimore International Academy-West is committed to providing a rigorous academiclearning environment that challenges all students to achieve our language immersion(Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, & French) and International…
Baltimore hunger project removes the barriers to learning by providing food and resources to children facing food insecurity in our community.
Baltimore International Academy-East is committed to providing a rigorous academiclearning environment that challenges all students to achieve our language immersion(Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, & French) and International…
The baltimore development corporation (bdc) is a non-profit organization that serves as the economic development agency for the city of baltimore. bdc's mission is to grow the city's economy in an inclusive, equitable manner by retaining,…
The baltimore educational scholarship trust, in partnership with our seventeen independent member schools, recruits and supports through the admissions process academically ambitious, african american students with financial need from the…
Sbcs, a title 1 school, seeks to provide each child with the tools necessary to live a fulfilling, productive life. the rigorous expeditionary learning (el) school model is engaging and student-centered. el cultivates students' love of…
Our mission is to dramatically improve the early career outcomes of dc youth and young adults of color by creating innovative programs and by mobilizing employers, educators, and city leaders to create a local, diverse talent pipeline. our…
Baltimore children & youth fund stewards public funds to support children and youth in baltimore city. the fund awards grants to community-based, youth-serving organizations and provides capacity-building and technical assistance to…
To improve student achievement while promoting health. students at afya will be engaged in physical activity while focusing on the development of their reading, writing, math, science, and social studies skills. afya provides an effective…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Thread Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Maryland Food Bank Inc. 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 22. 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 — 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.
22 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. 22 of the 37 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 BALTIMORE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY OF BALTIMORE CITY ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE CURRICULUM PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CODE IN THE SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds PAUL'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds ARTS FOR LEARNING MARYLAND INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARYLAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR URBAN FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds PARKS AND PEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds Art With a Heart Inc ↗
- Who funds The Dyslexia Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT PNEUMA INC ↗
- Who funds JOB OPPORTUNITIES TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE DESIGN SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds DIGITAL HARBOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREEN STREET ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds WIDE ANGLE YOUTH MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds THREAD INC ↗
- Who funds Druid Heights Community Development Corporation ↗
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: Fund for Educational Excellence Inc · France-Merrick Foundation Inc · The Abell Foundation Inc · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation Inc · Sherman Family Foundation · The United Way of Central Maryland Inc · Annie E Casey Foundation Inc · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · Family League of Baltimore City Inc · Lockhart Vaughan Foundation · The Morris Goldseker Foundation of Maryland Inc
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 Jean and Sidney Silber 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.
- Druid Heights Community Development Corporation — 100% of income from government
- Parks and People Inc — 43% of income from government
- Center for Urban Families Inc — 36% of income from government
- Paul's Place Inc — 29% of income from government
- Thread Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Maryland Food Bank Inc — 11% of income from government
- Art With a Heart Inc — 4% of income from government
- Wide Angle Youth Media Inc — 3% of income from government
- Digital Harbor Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Fund for Educational Excellence Inc — 1% of income from government
- Arts for Learning Maryland Inc — 1% 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 Jean and Sidney Silber Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Jean and Sidney Silber 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.