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Foundation Dossiers

Illinois · Private foundation

The Mara Bershad Foundation

$8k
Granted FY2022
6
Grants FY2022
6
Organizations funded FY2022
0%
First-time grantees FY2022
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2022
$1,000
Largest grant, FY2022
$3,000
Organizations funded a year
6 to 10
FY2020 to FY2022
States reached, FY2022
3
Total assets, FY2022
$4k

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2022, 0% of the organizations The Mara Bershad Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’21’22
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20226$8k0%
FY202110$12k10%
FY20209$11kn/a
60% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2022.

Arts & Culture$7kHealth$3kHuman Services$3kFood & Nutrition$2kOther$0

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2020 to FY2022, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Centronia$3,00030%
Shriners Hospitals for Children$3,00030%
Fifth House Ensemble$2,00020%
Maot Chitim of Greater Chicago Inc$1,50020%

Plus 6 recipients with no EIN on record ($20k), not named here.

Compare The Mara Bershad Foundation with peer funders

About The Mara Bershad Foundation

How much does The Mara Bershad Foundation give?
The Mara Bershad Foundation reported 6 grants totaling $7,500 in its FY2022 IRS filing. It funded between 6 and 10 organizations a year over FY2020 to FY2022.
What does The Mara Bershad Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2020 to FY2022, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (24%), Health (10%), Human Services (10%).
Who are The Mara Bershad Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2020 to FY2022: Centronia ($3k), Shriners Hospitals for Children ($3k), Fifth House Ensemble ($2k).
Does The Mara Bershad Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2022, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Where is The Mara Bershad Foundation based?
The Mara Bershad Foundation is based in IL.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record but names no grant recipient in the published copy, so the figures above are from FY2022, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Mara Bershad’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home