· Public charity
The Semi J & Ruth W Begun Foundation
Further the charitable, educational and religious purposes of the jewish federation of cleveland ("federation").
Read this first · the figures below need context
62% of The Semi J & Ruth W Begun Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Jewish Federation Of Cleveland, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year The Semi J & Ruth W Begun Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 7 organizations, $2M. 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 8 grants below total $2,188,100 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,465,268 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $277,168 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2019
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $359k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO | $850,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $500,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND | $429,000 |
| SHELTER HOUSE INC | $209,100 |
| MALTZ MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE | $100,000 |
| FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES INC | $50,000 |
| MILESTONES AUTISM RESOURCES | $25,000 |
| SEGULA | $25,000 |
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 (FY18–21, $185k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 15% of The Semi J & Ruth W Begun 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, 88% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 63% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +36% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2019, 2 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- JFJEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO5× · 2018–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +30%
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY5× · 2018–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +44%- BJBELLEFAIRE JEWISH CHILDREN'S BUREAU3× · 2018–2024 · $978k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- SGShepherds Gateone grant, 2020 · $150k · revenue +11%
- WOWORLD ORT INCone grant, 2023 · $90k · revenue 0% · 59% of their budget
- SMSTELLA MARIS INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +54%
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.
Jewish family services of greenwich (jfs) is a nonprofit social service agency dedicated to strengthening individuals and families in fairfield and new london counties. jfs provides behavioral health counseling, food security programs,…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
The mission of women against abuse is to provide quality, compassionate, and nonjudgmental services in a manner that fosters self-respect and independence in persons experiencing intimate partner violence and to lead the struggle to end…
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
See schedule o.power's mission is to help women reclaim their lives from addiction and related emotional health issues and improve the well-being of future generations. we provide a range of gender-responsive, trauma-informed drug and…
To provide with compassion and dedication superior quality health care and rehabilitation for adults and to directly or indirectly coordinate arrangements and provision for comprehensive health care and social support services to frail…
The mission of the st. vincent de paul society of san francisco (svdp-sf) is to offer hope and service on a direct person-to-person basis, working to break the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.
The mission of cje seniorlife is to enhance quality of life and facilitate independence of older adults. cje seniorlife values statement at cje seniorlife, we fulfill our mission and realize our vision for and on behalf of our clients, our…
The mission of ferd & gladys alpert jewish family & children's service of palm beach county, inc. is to serve the community by: - providing a range of needed social services to strengthen individuals and families. - participating in…
To help those challenged by chronic mental illness progress in their recovery by providing individualized and innovative treatments throughout life in a supportive community of families and professionals.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bellefaire Jewish Children's Bureau and the most unlike its peers is Ho'ola Na Pua. 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.
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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND OHIO ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BELLEFAIRE JEWISH CHILDREN'S BUREAU ↗
- Who funds The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage ↗
- Who funds Shelter House Inc ↗
- Who funds FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds MILESTONES AUTISM RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PRESERVATION AND STRENGTHENING SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Shepherds Gate ↗
- Who funds SEGULA ↗
- Who funds WORLD ORT INC ↗
- Who funds STELLA MARIS INC ↗
- Who funds HO'OLA NA PUA ↗
- Who funds PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLLABORATIVE TO END HUMAN TRAFFICKING ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S RECOVERY CENTER ↗
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 Cleveland Foundation · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Semi J & Ruth W Begun 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.