· Private foundation
The Ressler Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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
77% of The Ressler Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Brown University, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 20 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Ressler Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $211k. 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k4 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INDIASPORA | $150,000 |
| UJA FEDERATION OF NEW YORK | $25,000 |
| SOUTHEAST VENTURA COUNTY YMCA | $10,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM MEMORIAL | $10,000 |
| JUDGES AND LAWYERS BREAST CANCER ALERT | $5,000 |
| LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART | $5,000 |
| MINORITY HUMANITARIAN FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE LEUKEMIA AND LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–22, $325k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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.
39 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2021, 36 since wound down; 32 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $124k 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
- HSHARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL7× · 2017–2024 · $2.4M · revenue +21%
- PCPROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION2× · 2017–2018 · $250k · revenue +57%
- BBABY2BABY3× · 2022–2024 · $210k · revenue +100%
Funded once
- TMTHE MELANOMA RESEARCH ALLIANCEone grant, 2020 · $325k
- MRMELANOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $322k · revenue +33%
- HBHARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOLone grant, 2018 · $251k
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.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
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 nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
Human rights watch ("hrw") defends the rights of people worldwide. we scrupulously investigate abuses, expose the facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. human rights watch is an independent,…
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Immigration Law Center and the most unlike its peers is We the Women. 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 33 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
102 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. 102 of the 137 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 BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MELANOMA RESEARCH ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds MELANOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIBERTY HILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BABY2BABY ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR ART RESEARCH AND ALLIANCES INC ↗
- Who funds INDIASPORA ↗
- Who funds Casa Cornelia Legal Services ↗
- Who funds We the Women ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds WORTH RISES INC ↗
- Who funds DREAMORG ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA ASSOCIATION OF FREE AND CHARITABLE CLINICS INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds Juntos y Unidos por Puerto Rico Inc ↗
- Who funds Immigrant Defenders Law Center ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALEXANDRIA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST FOUNDATION 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 Communal Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Conrad N Hilton Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The California Wellness Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Liberty Hill Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · California Community Foundation · Weingart Foundation · California Changelawyers · The Karsh Family Foundation
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 Ressler 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% 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 Ressler Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ressler 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.