· Private foundation
The Silvermansutherland Family Foundation
Its FY2021 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
65% of The Silvermansutherland Family Foundation’s FY2021 grant dollars went to Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2021 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year The Silvermansutherland Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $17k. 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 FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL FUND | $5,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA | $3,000 |
| GROTON SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON | $1,250 |
| LAUREL SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE | $1,000 |
| ST IGNATIUS HIGH SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDIES | $1,000 |
| UNICEF USA | $500 |
| FRIENDS OF LITURGICAL MUSIC | $500 |
| MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | $300 |
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 (FY17–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 31% of your 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.
5 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2019, 0 since wound down; 9 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 FY2021, 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
- HGHARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL FUND5× · 2017–2021 · $33k
- CICAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA4× · 2017–2020 · $12k · revenue -24%
GROTON SCHOOL4× · 2017–2020 · $10k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- TGThe George Washington Universitygraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +30%
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $250 · revenue +364%- WWGBHone grant, 2018 · $250
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Education and Research
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
Mission strengthened by more than a century and a half of dedication to academic excellence, boston college commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and research in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and to the…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The mission of the university of cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. organizationally, we achieve this through two divisions…
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Manhattanville University and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Liturgical Music Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 18 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds GROTON SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds THE CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON INC ↗
- Who funds LAUREL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MANHATTANVILLE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LITURGICAL MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PROPRIETORS OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM ↗
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 Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · 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 Silvermansutherland 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Massachusetts Historical Society — 22% of income from government
- The Celebrity Series of Boston Inc — 3% of income from government
- Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum — 0% of income from government
- Museum of Fine Arts — 0% 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 Silvermansutherland Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Silvermansutherland 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.