· Private foundation
The Kestenbaum Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
81% of The Kestenbaum Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Jewish Federation Of Greater Philadelphia, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2018, the last year The Kestenbaum Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 14 organizations, $555k. 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2018
- Under $10k15 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $26k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $120k
- $250k+1 grant · $390k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY | $390,250 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA | $120,000 |
| CHILDREN'S CRISIS TREATMENT CENTER | $25,500 |
| WILLIAM PENN CHARTER SCHOOL | $6,689 |
| HAR ZION TEMPLE | $5,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| THE WISTAR INSTITUTE OF ANATOMY & BIOLOGY | $1,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART | $700 |
| FREIRE CHARTER SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $500 |
| JEWISH LEARNING VENTURE | $500 |
| LIVE LIKE BLAINE FOUNDATION | $500 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $500 |
| LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $250 |
| JEFFERSON'S SIDNEY KIMMEL CANCER CENTER | $250 |
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 (FY17–21, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 42% 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.
17 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2018, 7 since wound down; 31 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (too recent to call). Read against FY2018, 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 FY2025, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $850 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
WEITZMAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY9× · 2017–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +29%- TWTHE WISTAR INSTITUTE OF ANATOMY AND BIOLOGY6× · 2017–2022 · $143k · revenue +8%
- CCCHILDREN'S CRISIS TREATMENT CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $79k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- HCHARID CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $1k · revenue +111%
- PMPHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART CRAFT SHOWone grant, 2017 · $700
- AIACADEMY IN MANAYUNKgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue +156%
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.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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.
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,…
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.
As philadelphia's jesuit catholic university, saint joseph's provides a rigorous, student-centered education rooted in the liberal arts. we prepare students for personal excellence, professional success, and engaged citizenship. striving…
The hugo w. moser research institute at kennedy krieger, inc. (the "research institute") is an internationally recognized research facility finding answers to problems and injuries that affect a child's developing brain. researchers have…
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The mission of the institute is to translate basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and related developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. it is catalyzing a new…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Israel Tennis Centers Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Gateway School. 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 42 years old; the field is 19. 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 9% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 61 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds WEITZMAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE WISTAR INSTITUTE OF ANATOMY AND BIOLOGY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CRISIS TREATMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF LIBI INC ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM PENN CHARTER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL TENNIS CENTERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Cystic Fibrosis Research Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds FREIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds LIVE LIKE BLAINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds MANN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds JEWISH RELIEF AGENCY ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS FOR CANCER CARE AND PREVENTION INC ↗
- Who funds HARID CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds THE GATEWAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LIVENGRIN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY IN MANAYUNK ↗
- Who funds JEWISH LEARNING VENTURE ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds RAYMOND AND RUTH PERELMAN JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRIBE 12 ↗
- Who funds WILLIAMS SYNDROME ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds BRANDYWINE VALLEY SPCA ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S TUMOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB SOUTH JERSEY INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP RAMAH IN THE POCONOS ↗
- Who funds Comcast Spectacor Charities Flyers Wives Fight For Lives ↗
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 Saramar Charitable Fund · The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · The Tobin Family Foundation · The Specter Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Steven and Ilene Berman Family Foundation Inc · The Cigna Group Foundation · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · Julius & Ray Charlestein Foundation · Erlbaum Family Foundation · Chubb Charitable Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation 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 Kestenbaum 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% 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.