· Private foundation
The Michael & Helen Schaffer 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k17 grants · $319k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RANSOM EVERGLADES SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| MAKE A WISH SOUTHERN FLORIDA FOUNDATION | $43,000 |
| JEWISH LEARNING CENTER | $35,000 |
| LEHRMAN COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| AMERICAN ISRAEL DEMOCRACY COALITION | $25,000 |
| THE SOBE ROOM INC | $20,000 |
| PASADENA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| STYLE SAVES INC | $20,000 |
| SAG HARBOR CINEMA ARTS CENTER | $20,000 |
| BOLD BEAUTY PROJECT | $15,000 |
| FALMOUTH SERVICE CENTER | $15,000 |
| THE ANEURYSM AND AVM FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| PLUM ISLAND FOUNCATION | $15,000 |
| BOCA RATON REGIONAL HOSPITAL | $11,000 |
| WHITE PLAINS HOSPITAL 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 (FY24–25, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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 10% of The Michael & Helen Schaffer 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, 39% of the giving stays in MA; read by stated purpose it is 37% — 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.
24 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 16 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $161k 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
- RERANSOM EVERGLADES SCHOOL INC3× · 2023–2025 · $125k · revenue +18%
- LCLEHRMAN COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $115k · revenue +136%
- TSTHE SOBE ROOM INC5× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- GMGREATER MIAMI JEWISH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $45k
- OOceanaone grant, 2017 · $25k
- MEMASS EYE AND EAR FEWKES FUND OF DERMATOLOGY RESEARCHone grant, 2021 · $20k
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.
Our mission is to improve quality of life by transforming the understanding, treatment, and care of the ocular surface.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
Mjhs health system is a charitable not-for-profit established to support the activities of affiliated organizations. mjhs is built on the core values of compassion, dignity and respect, first established by the four brooklyn ladies in…
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Brighton marine, inc. provides military and veteran families with comprehensive campus-based quality health care, as well as affordable and supportive housing for at-risk veterans and their families.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
To provide accountable, responsive quality care with the highest degree of sensitivity to the needs of our diverse, multilingual population while fulfilling the professional and educational needs of our members.
The mission of the alzheimer's foundation of america (afa) is to provide support, services, and education to individuals, families and caregivers affected by alzheimer's disease and related dementias nationwide, and fund research for…
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…
City of Hope National Medical Center's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Esplanade Association Inc and the most unlike its peers is Social Service League of Cohasset Inc. 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 25 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.
43 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. 43 of the 66 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 MUSEUM OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds WGBH Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds RANSOM EVERGLADES SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds LEHRMAN COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE SOBE ROOM INC ↗
- Who funds Long Island Alzheimers and Dementia Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds White Plains Hospital Medical Center ↗
- Who funds HAZELDEN BETTY FORD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WNET ↗
- Who funds SOUTH FLORIDA AFTER-SCHOOL ALL STARS INC ↗
- Who funds American Friends of Jamaica Inc ↗
- Who funds HEALING HEARTS WITH HORSES MA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICA ISRAEL DEMOCRACY COALITION ↗
- Who funds THE ANEURYSM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HARMONY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Pasadena Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds STYLE SAVES INC ↗
- Who funds SAG HARBOR CINEMA ARTS CENTER INC CO SUSAN MEAD ↗
- Who funds FALMOUTH SERVICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOLD BEAUTY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MIAMI CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds Boca Raton Regional Hospital Inc ↗
- Who funds Lyric Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds RICHARD J CARON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Care Dimensions Inc ↗
- Who funds Jewish Culture High School Inc ↗
- Who funds PLUM ISLAND ARTS ASSOCIATION 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: Stuart a Miller Family Foundation Inc · The Ford Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Michael & Helen Schaffer 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Care Dimensions Inc — 14% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Museum of Science — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 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 Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Michael & Helen Schaffer 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.