· Private foundation
The Specter 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k42 grants · $138k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $226k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $647k
- $250k+2 grants · $4.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHAREFOOD | $3,483,333 |
| UC LAW SAN FRANCISCO | $1,000,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA | $201,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA | $126,850 |
| DREXEL UNIVERSITY FUND | $100,000 |
| DELAWARE VALLEY FRIENDS SCHOOL | $83,333 |
| OUR GENERATION SPEAKS | $82,000 |
| TRIBE 12 | $53,500 |
| HAR ZION TEMPLE | $27,500 |
| HOLY REDEEMER HEALTH SYSTEMS DEV DEPT | $25,000 |
| WEITZMAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY | $25,000 |
| US SQUASH RACQUETS ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
| SQUASH AND EDUCATION ALLIANCE | $25,000 |
| US SQUASH RACQUETS ASSOCIATION | $25,000 |
| PERELMAN JEWISH DAY SCHOOL | $18,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $196k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 80% of those 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.
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 +35% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2024, 57 since wound down; 13 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $226k 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
- DUDREXEL UNIVERSITY5× · 2018–2022 · $8.7M · revenue +7%
- SFSHARE FOOD PROGRAM7× · 2017–2023 · $6.8M · revenue +572%
- RARAYMOND AND RUTH PERELMAN JEWISH DAY SCHOOL6× · 2017–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +56%
Funded once
- PCPENN CHARTER SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
- PSPENN SQUASH CENTERone grant, 2020 · $200k
- BUBRANDEIS UNIVERSITY (OUR GENERATION SPEAKS)one grant, 2023 · $144k
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 university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
Philadelphia jewish film and medias mission is to educate and engage diverse philadelphia communities, jewish and non-jewish alike, by presenting world-class film premieres, repertory cinema, and associated programs that are inspired by…
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
To enrich the lives of jewish and undergraduate students so that they may enrich the jewish people and the world. penn state hillel's student leaders, professionals, and lay leaders are dedicated to creating a pluralistic, welcoming, and…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
As philadelphia's jesuit catholic university, saint joseph's provides a rigorous, student-centered education rooted in the liberal arts. we prepare students for personal excellence, professional success, and engaged citizenship. striving…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The mission of fuchs mizrachi school is to educate each child in the orthodox jewish religious zionist tradition, imbued with the love of g-d, torah, people and the land of israel.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Fairleigh dickinson university is a center of academic excellence dedicated to the preparation of world citizens through global education. the university strives to provide students with the multi-disciplinary, intercultural, and ethical…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Family & Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia and the most unlike its peers is Lower Merion Conservancy. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 36 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
118 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. 118 of the 223 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SHARE FOOD PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds RAYMOND AND RUTH PERELMAN JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds OUR GENERATION SPEAKS INC ↗
- Who funds STEEL CITY SQUASH INC ↗
- Who funds DRUEDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM PENN CHARTER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Orot ↗
- Who funds TRIBE 12 ↗
- Who funds SQUASH AND EDUCATION ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER PHILADELPHIA COALITION AGAINST HUNGER ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds MACCABI USA 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: The Saramar Charitable Fund · The William Penn Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · Erlbaum Family Foundation · The Daniel B and Florence E Green Foundation · Katz Family Charitable Trust · Daniel M Tabas Family Foundation · The Gordon Charter Foundation · Lindback Cr & Mf Foundation Tw Main
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 Specter 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.
- Brandeis University — 9% of income from government
- The Trustees of Mount Holyoke College — 1% 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 Specter Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Specter 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.