· Private foundation
The Shemesh 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
62% of The Shemesh Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Donors Fund Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year The Shemesh Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $499k. 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k6 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $101k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $368k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YESHIVA MEOR HATALMUD OF LAKEWOOD | $140,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| THE DONORS FUND | $78,000 |
| CONGREGATION MISHKAN YECHESKEL | $50,000 |
| KHAL BAIS SHMIEL | $24,000 |
| YESHIVA OF KASHO | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $16,000 |
| MERCAZ HATORAH VEHACHINUCH | $15,550 |
| CONGREGATION ZICHRON CHAIM | $15,000 |
| CONGREGATION BETH MEDRASH CHASIDIM | $10,000 |
| CONGREGATION YETEV LEV | $8,430 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,200 |
| MOSDOS BOBOV - 45 | $6,845 |
| CONGREGATION TIFERES AVROHOM | $5,000 |
| KEREN YAGDIL TORAH | $2,750 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% of your 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.
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.
7 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2023, 1 since wound down; 19 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
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 40% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $79k went to new ones.
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
- STSCOTTSDALE TORAH CENTER2× · 2021–2022 · $130k
- CMCONGREGATION MISHKAN TECHESKEL4× · 2021–2024 · $118k
- YOYESHIVA OF KASHO5× · 2021–2025 · $85k
Funded once
- MBMOSDOS BEIT JOSEF TZVIone grant, 2021 · $120k
- CSCONG SHAAREI CHESEDone grant, 2021 · $110k
- CACONTRIBUTION ARE VOLUMINOUS DETAILS AVAILABLE AT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $96k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
Your grantees are a median of 25 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
2 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. 2 of the 45 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.
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 Ojc Fund · Jack Adjmi Family Foundation Inc · Strulovich Family Foundation Trust · Hf Foundation · American Friends of Bnai Levy Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Shemesh 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 Shemesh Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Shemesh 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.