· Private foundation
The Meryl & Christopher Lewis Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JUDES CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $3,500 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $1,500 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,200 |
| MPN RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| FEEDING WESTCHESTER | $500 |
| DOROT | $500 |
| HASTINGS ON HUDSON FIRE DEPARTMENT | $500 |
| GILDA'S CLUB | $500 |
| LUSTGARTEN FOUNDATION | $500 |
| YONKERS ANIMAL SHELTER | $500 |
| ANIMAL EDUCATION & RESCUE | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| OCD FOUNDATION | $500 |
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 (FY18–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 64% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of The Meryl & Christopher Lewis Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 69% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 65% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
42 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 3 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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 MPN RESEARCH FOUNDATION8× · 2018–2025 · $8k · revenue +68%
PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION5× · 2018–2023 · $5k · revenue +91%
THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH5× · 2021–2025 · $5k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- JJDCone grant, 2022 · $2k
- HIHEIFER INTERNATIONALone grant, 2022 · $1k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $1k
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.
World animal protection is a global organization working to end factory farming and wildlife exploitation. we expose cruel systems, promote animal-friendly alternatives, and influence policy change. for over 75 years, we've been rewriting…
To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. enacting good laws depends upon electing good lawmakers, and we remind voters which candidates care about and support animal issues.
HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS INTERNATIONAL, FKA HUMANE SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL (HSI), works around the globe to promote the human-animal bond, rescue and protect dogs and cats, improve farm animal welfare, protect wildlife, promote animal-free…
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Founded in 1877, american humane association, dba american humane society (american humane) is committed to ensuring the safety, welfare and well-being of animals. our leadership programs are first to serve in promoting and nurturing the…
Our vision is a world where humans treat animals with respect, empathy and understanding. four paws mission is to be the strong, global and independent voice for animals.
To end the #1 cause of suffering and death for dogs and cats globally, by developing food that will spay and neuter them, without surgery and end the overpopulation problem without killing.
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.
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
To pass animal protection laws, educate the public, and support humane candidates for office.
Pet animal welfare society of ct (paws), established in 1962, is a no-kill animal rescue shelter dedicated to the rescue and adoption of our community's homeless and abused dogs and cats. paws efforts are focused on three critical needs:…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is God's Love We Deliver Inc and the most unlike its peers is Planned Parenthood. 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 29 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 103 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 AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds THE MPN RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds DOROT INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMALKIND INC ↗
- Who funds BLUEPATH SERVICE DOGS INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING WESTCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds HOPES DOOR INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS CROSSED ANIMAL RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HEART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NUNATAKS LTD D/B/A GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds FAMILY TO FAMILY INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS KICKING CANCER INC ↗
- Who funds COLLABORATIVE FOR PALLIATIVE CARE ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds SPCA OF WESTCHESTER 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 Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Daly Family Foundation Inc · The Thomas and Agnes Carvel Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Verizon Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Jewish Communal Fund · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Bank of America Charitable 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 Meryl & Christopher Lewis 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.
- Stepping Stones Museum for Children Inc — 1% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Bird Alliance of Oregon Inc — 0% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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 Meryl & Christopher Lewis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Meryl & Christopher Lewis Foundation 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.