· Private foundation
The Michael and Lori Milken Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
77% of The Michael and Lori Milken Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to The Jewish Community Foundation Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 69 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year The Michael and Lori Milken Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 69 organizations, $23M. 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 88% of THE MICHAEL AND LORI MILKEN FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k55 grants · $150k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $290k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+5 grants · $21M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MILKEN INSTITUTE | $18,956,703 |
| PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION | $1,158,000 |
| LOS ANGELES BALLET | $455,000 |
| AMERICAN EXCHANGE PROJECT | $250,000 |
| OWNERSHIP WORKS | $250,000 |
| WINDWARD SCHOOL | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - MARSHALL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS | $130,000 |
| UCLA FOUNDATIONMATTEL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $122,000 |
| DREAM | $100,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS | $100,000 |
| KEHILLAT ISRAEL | $100,000 |
| LOS ANGELES DODGERS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| MILKEN COMMUNITY SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION | $100,000 |
| KEEP MEMORY ALIVE | $75,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $233k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
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 +41% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
113 repeat relationships — 73 still active in FY2023, 40 since wound down; 34 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, 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 FY2024, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.7M 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 MILKEN INSTITUTE5× · 2020–2024 · $46M · revenue +182%
- PCPROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $4.5M · revenue +57%
- LALOS ANGELES BALLET INC5× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +83%
Funded once
- JFJEWISH FEDERATIONone grant, 2020 · $303k
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue +8%- PMPREVENTIVE MEDICINE RESEARCH INSTITUTEone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +8%
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.
Based on jewish values, the jewish federation of greater los angeles convenes and leads the community and leverages its resources to assure the continuity of the jewish people, support a secure state of israel, care for jews in need here…
Committed to exceptional healthcare quality for all and actively engaged with our community, einstein drives scientific discovery and educates compassionate leaders in health and science.
The mission of the university of california, irvine foundation (uc irvine foundation) is to raise and manage private funds to support uc irvine's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service. to this end, the uc…
To create an informed, celebratory and satisfying jewish community for students at the university of southern california, to deepen jewish identity through social, intellectual and spiritual participation, to offer diversified…
We steward $1.5 billion in charitable assets through donor-advised funds, endowments, and other giving vehicles. partnering with 1,400 individuals, families, and organizations, we build enduring legacies and multigenerational impact. in…
The american technion society supports the technion's critical research and (continued on sch o)
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
The shalom hartman institute (shi) is a leading research and educational center serving israel and world jewry. we work to enrich the moral and spiritual life of israel and the jewish people, deepen the commitment to pluralism and israel's…
To harness the power of the human immune system and advanced computing technologies to create and translate scientific discoveries into next generation vaccines and therapies for prevention, control and cure of chronic diseases, enabling…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Hebrew University Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Jewish Community Foundation Charitable Fund. 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 38 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
157 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. 157 of the 220 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 THE MILKEN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds MILKEN COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OWNERSHIP WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN EXCHANGE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BRENTWOOD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds THE JOHN THOMAS DYE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ELLIS ISLAND HONORS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds 'IOLANI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR JEWISH COMMUNITY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds HORATIO ALGER ASSN OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds THE BRENT SHAPIRO FOUNDATION FOR DRUG AWARENESS ↗
- Who funds PREVENTIVE MEDICINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUSED ULTRASOUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Young Eisner Scholars ↗
- Who funds Teach for America 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: Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · California Community Foundation · The Stanley & Joyce Black Family Foundation · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles Group · The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation · Richard and Ellen Sandler Family Foundation · The Lowell Milken Family Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · The Ahmanson Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management 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 Michael and Lori Milken Family 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.
- Pioneer Valley Symphony Inc — 1% of income from government
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Aleph Institute 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 and Lori Milken Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Michael and Lori Milken Family 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.