· Private foundation
The Lerner 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $198k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $300k
- $250k+2 grants · $855k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND | $500,000 |
| CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA | $354,500 |
| MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER | $100,000 |
| WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS | $50,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND | $50,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC - VELOSANO | $50,000 |
| GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK | $50,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC CHILDREN'S | $48,400 |
| MALTZ MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE | $25,000 |
| CEDARS-SINAI | $25,000 |
| CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $24,500 |
| FOUNDATION FOR ART & PRESERVATION IN EMBASSIES | $20,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION - PAIN MANAGEMENT | $15,000 |
| DOWN SYNDROME ACHIEVES | $10,000 |
| HOMES FOR LIFE FOUNDATION | $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 (FY20–25, $56k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 96% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 9 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k 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 Musical Arts Association6× · 2020–2025 · $2.1M · revenue +45%
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY4× · 2020–2023 · $1.3M · revenue +39%
MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER6× · 2020–2025 · $600k · revenue +64%
Funded once
- CCCLEVELAND CLINIC - COVID RESEARCHone grant, 2020 · $100k
- PSPARK SYNAGOGUEone grant, 2024 · $50k
- HOHOLD ON TO YOUR MUSIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $15k
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 mission of the cleveland museum of art (cma) is to fulfill its dual roles as one of the world's most distinguished comprehensive art museums and as one of northeastern ohio's principal civic and cultural institutions. the museum,…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
The mission of the hebrew academy is to imbue all students with a love of god, torah and eretz yisroel and to prepare them to achieve excellence in torah and general knowledge based on successful cooperation among family, judaic and…
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The contemporary jewish museum (the cjm) makes the diversity of the jewish experience relevant for a twenty-first-century audience through innovative exhibitions and programs that educate, challenge, and inspire.
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.
Hadassah, the women's zionist organization of america, inc., a new york not-for-profit corporation ("hwzoa") enhances the health and lives of people in israel, the united states and worldwide through education, advocacy, women's…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Downsyndrome Achieves. 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 40 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) — 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 11% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 49 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 CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds The Musical Arts Association ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FOUNDATION FOR THE RIGHTEOUS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND BALLET ↗
- Who funds BIKUR CHOLIM OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR LIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Downsyndrome Achieves ↗
- Who funds VALUES-IN-ACTION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NEGEV FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Creative Living for Life Inc ↗
- Who funds THE LITTLEST HEROES 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: The Cleveland Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · Marla & Joseph Shafran Foundation · The Albert B & Audrey G Ratner Family Foundation · Akron Community Foundation · Irving I Stone Foundation · The Joseph and Florence Mandel Family- Penni M and Stephen J Weinberg Family Fund · The Esther and Hyman Rapport Philanthropic Trust · The Miller Family Foundation · Abr Family Foundation No 1 · The Horowitz Ratner Family Foundation · Kertesz Family 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 Lerner 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.