· Private foundation
The Richard and Susan Master Family 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
88% of The Richard and Susan Master Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 10 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year The Richard and Susan Master Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $263k. 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k9 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $61k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $175k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SPOTLIGHT PA | $75,000 |
| CENTER FOR HEALTH AND DEMOCRACY | $50,000 |
| LEHIGH VALLEY JUSTICE INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $20,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY | $11,200 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF EASTON | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF YEMEN ORDE | $10,000 |
| CB COMMUNITY SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| NORTHAMPTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| PUBLIC CITIZEN IN WASHINGTON DC | $5,000 |
| LEHIGH COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY | $4,000 |
| TIKVA CHILDREN'S SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| WDIY 881 FM | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,125 |
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 (FY17–25, $199k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +12% since the first grant, against -27% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 1 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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 FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- LCLEHIGH COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $235k · revenue +125%
- JFJEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY9× · 2017–2025 · $199k · revenue +114%
- CCCB COMMUNITY SCHOOLS7× · 2017–2024 · $160k · revenue +215%
Funded once
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITYone grant, 2023 · $300k
- LVLEHIGH VALLEY PUBLIC TELEVISIONone grant, 2022 · $40k
- PCProgressive Change Instituteone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue -34%
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.
The jewish electorate institute (jei) is an independent, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that surveys, interprets, reports, and educates the public about the perspectives, voting behaviors, and motivations of the american jewish…
Central business group on health advocates for the appropriate balance between cost and quality of employee healthcare in lancaster county by providing education on healthcare issues, promoting cooperation among payers, providers and…
To provide high quality civil legal assistance and other services to indigent individuals and families.
The delaware center for justice, inc. seeks to ensure an effective, efficient, and equitable system of justice in delaware through advocacy, direct services, research and public education.
To advance economic and social liberties and a free enterprise society through strategic litigation, training, communication, activism and research. in addition, the center will train law students, lawyers and policy activists in the…
To initiate and conduct research, publications and the production of educational materials and position papers on questions pertaining to public policy, strategy, diplomacy, administration, economics and society, jewish political tradition…
See schedule o - the american jewish historical society (the "society") is the oldest ethnic, cultural archive in the united states. the society provides access to more than 30 million documents and 50,000 books, photographs, art and…
The Organization's mission is to improve the safety, quality, and affordability of healthcare for everyone.
We build strong communities through journalism and civic engagement.
Organize general election presidential and vice-presidential debates
The mission of the lehigh valley economic development corporation is to market the economic assets of the lehigh valley and to create partnerships to support the recruitment, growth and retention of employers, and the creation of jobs for…
The mission of the library company is to enrich public understanding of our nation's history by fostering advanced research in its collections of primary source materials relating to american history and culture from the 17th through 19th…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lehigh Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Museum of Indian Culture. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 33 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 LEHIGH VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds CB COMMUNITY SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH VALLEY JUSTICE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SPOTLIGHT PA ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR HEALTH AND DEMOCRACY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF EASTON INC ↗
- Who funds Progressive Change Institute ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MUSEUM OF INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds HEALTH CARE FOR ALL OREGON ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR HUMANISTIC CHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds PROMISE NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds J STREET EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds JAZZ GENERATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF INDIAN CULTURE ↗
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: Lehigh Valley Community Foundation · United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley · Ross J Born and Wendy G Born Charitable Trust · Martin D Cohen Family Foundation · Harry C Trexler Estate · Air Products Foundation · The Century Fund Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Richard and Susan Master 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.
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 Richard and Susan Master Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Richard and Susan Master 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.