· Private foundation
The Lois & Irving Blum Foundation Inc
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
96% of The Lois & Irving Blum Foundation Inc’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year The Lois & Irving Blum Foundation Inc named its own grantees at scale: 64 organizations, $4M. 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k11 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k61 grants · $1.4M
- $50k–250k19 grants · $1.7M
- $250k+2 grants · $630k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UC BERKELEY HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER | $320,000 |
| TIDES FOUNDATION | $310,000 |
| WINWARD FUND | $230,000 |
| NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL | $200,000 |
| GEORGIA ALLIANCE EDUCATION FUND | $200,000 |
| CONFLICT AWARENESS PROJECT | $130,000 |
| COMMON DEFENSE EDUCATION FUND | $110,000 |
| AMALGAMATED FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| AUSCHWITZ INSTITUTE FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE | $80,000 |
| RIDERS ALLIANCE INC | $75,000 |
| TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES | $65,000 |
| IOWA CITIZENS FOR COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT (ICCI) | $65,000 |
| MAINE PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER | $65,000 |
| PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS | $60,000 |
| CASA DE MARYLAND | $60,000 |
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 (FY20–23, $82k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 39% 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.
52 repeat relationships — 44 still active in FY2022, 8 since wound down; 86 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $41k 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
- CAConflict Awareness Project5× · 2020–2024 · $375k · revenue +131% · 59% of their budget
- CDCOMMON DEFENSE EDUCATION FUND INC2× · 2022–2023 · $260k · revenue +285%
- NYNew York University2× · 2022–2023 · $255k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- FPFUSION PARTNERSHIP INCone grant, 2020 · $219k · revenue -78%
- FFFUSION FBO TEACHERS DEVELOPMENT PROJECTone grant, 2021 · $204k
- WJWILLIAM J BRENNAN JR CENTER FOR JUSTICE INCone grant, 2020 · $40k
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.
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Alliance for justice builds the strength of progressive movements by training and educating nonprofit organizations on advocacy, while harnessing their collective power to transform our state and federal courts.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Council for court excellence's (cce's) mission is to bring people together to conduct research, educate, and advocate to make d.c.'s unique legal systems more just, equitable, and accountable to the community.
Justice Action Center JAC pilots an innovative model that advances the rights of immigrant communities by connecting cutting-edge impact litigation and compelling narrative and communications content. The purpose of JAC is to advance the…
The center for international policy is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable u.s. approach to foreign policy. through…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
Powerswitch action is a national network forging collective democracy and economies in our cities and states, together with our 21 grassroots affiliates.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Venture Fund and the most unlike its peers is Indigenous Women Rising Indigeous Women Rising. 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 24 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
124 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 124 of the 179 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 Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Conflict Awareness Project ↗
- Who funds COMMON DEFENSE EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds RIDERS ALLIANCE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Guernica Centre for InternationalJustice ↗
- Who funds AUSCHWITZ INSTITUTE FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND MASS ATROCITIES ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA ALLIANCE EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FUSION PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds JEWS UNITED FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds Win Without War Education Fund ↗
- Who funds IMAGINE NORTH CAROLINA FIRST ↗
- Who funds CASA INC ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA CITIZENS FOR COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT ↗
- Who funds PA Alliance Foundation ↗
- Who funds MAINE PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRONT LINE USA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORKING AMERICA EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds THE ASSOCIATED JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION OF BALTIMORE INC ↗
- Who funds SPRING STREET CLIMATE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds National Center for Youth Law ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LIBERTY BELL DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO ORGANIZING COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Skylight Engagement Inc ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART ↗
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: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · Windward Fund · Foundation to Promote Open Society · New Venture Fund · Hopewell Fund · NEO Philanthropy Inc · All Hands on Deck Network Inc · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · The Jm Kaplan Fund Inc · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors 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 Lois & Irving Blum 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- The House of Ruth Maryland Inc — 19% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Casa Inc — 8% of income from government
- The American Visionary Art Museum Inc — 6% of income from government
- Baltimore Museum of Art — 4% of income from government
- Fusion Partnership Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore Inc — 1% of income from government
- Fund for Educational Excellence Inc — 1% of income from government
- Goucher College — 0% 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 Lois & Irving Blum Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Lois & Irving Blum 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.