· Private foundation
The Sherman 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.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k21 grants · $79k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $94k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $105k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF METRO DETROIT | $55,000 |
| AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| HILLEL DAY SCHOOL OF METRO DETROIT | $33,500 |
| BRILLIANT DETROIT | $30,000 |
| RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL | $10,000 |
| ISRAEL GUIDE DOG CENTER | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HILLEL | $10,000 |
| PALM SPRINGS FRIENDS OF PHILHARMONIC | $8,167 |
| DESERT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| EISENHOWER HEALTH FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| JEWISH COLORADO | $5,000 |
| CENTER FOR JEWISH CULTURE AND CREATIVITY | $5,000 |
| CLAL NATIONAL JEWISH CENTER FOR LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP | $5,000 |
| ZEKELMAN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CENTER | $5,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ORR SHALOM | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $73k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 1% 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $58k 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
- OAORT AMERICA INC6× · 2018–2023 · $145k · revenue +14%
BRILLIANT DETROIT5× · 2018–2024 · $115k · revenue +129%- EMEisenhower Medical Center6× · 2018–2024 · $84k · revenue +77%
Funded once
- ESENP SPACE PROGRAMone grant, 2018 · $25k
- HGHAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION PJ LIBRARYone grant, 2018 · $6k
- CFCentral Fund of Israelgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $6k · revenue +31%
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 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 jewish fund is organized and operates exclusively for charitable, educational, and religious purposes. the fund's primary activities are: supporting a jewish health care mission in the greater detroit area and michigan; promotion of…
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…
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…
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
Our vision is to reignite the zionist spirit and meet the needs of jewish civilization in the twenty-first century by connecting people around the world through the vibrancy and creativity of contemporary israeli culture.
To further the welfare of the jewish community
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…
To promote and foster the creation of a zionist intellectual infrastructure for the state of israel, the development of a jewish national culture, and the establishment and promotion of intellectual and economic liberty.
To promote and enhance jewish religious observance in canada
Offering jewish adults a personal connection to judaism,fostering a sense of belonging to the greater jewishcommunity, and building bridges between jews of allbackgrounds. to date, over 74,000 men and women from 39countries have been…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Detroit and the most unlike its peers is Dr Gary Burnstein Community Health Clinic. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 82 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 JEWISH FEDERATION OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds BRILLIANT DETROIT ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ↗
- Who funds HILLEL DAY SCHOOL OF METRO DETROIT ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL GUIDE DOG CENTER FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS FRIENDS OF PHILHARMONIC ↗
- Who funds DESERT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YAD EZRA ↗
- Who funds RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM SPRINGS AND DESERT AREA ↗
- Who funds JARC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds MOISHE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HILLEL OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds JEWISH HOSPICE & CHAPLAINCY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds KADIMA ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PEF ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds MOMENTUM UNLIMITED 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: Alan Jay and Sue Kaufman Foundation · The Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe Family Foundation · Harold and Penny B Blumenstein Foundation Corporation · Grosfeld Foundation · Karp Family Foundation · Shari & Alon Friendship Foundation Inc · Barron Family Foundation · David Kahan Family Foundation · The Eugene Applebaum Family Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Spencer M Partrich Charitable 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 Sherman 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.
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% 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 Sherman Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Sherman 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.