· Private foundation
The Sumner & Lois Herman Charitable Foundation
Its FY2023 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 48% of THE SUMNER & LOIS HERMAN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k35 grants · $61k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CENTRAL MA | $10,000 |
| SHAMROCK FOUNDATION | $6,800 |
| BRAIN INJURY ASSOC OF MASS | $5,870 |
| ARCK | $5,000 |
| UMASS MEMORIAL | $5,000 |
| MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENT | $5,000 |
| ROSIES PLACE | $4,000 |
| WHITE SNAKE PROJECTS | $4,000 |
| TEMPLE BETH AM | $3,026 |
| JEWISH HEALTHCARE CENTER | $2,710 |
| DRESS FOR SUCCESS | $2,575 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| PAN MASS CHALLENGE | $2,038 |
| NEPCF | $1,800 |
| PLEDGEIT | $1,442 |
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 (FY17–23, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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 +56% since the first grant, against +42% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2023, 24 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- JHJEWISH HEALTHCARE CENTER INC7× · 2017–2023 · $77k · revenue +20%
- BIBRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS INC7× · 2017–2023 · $46k · revenue +26%
- RPROSIE'S PLACE INC7× · 2017–2023 · $29k · revenue +93%
Funded once
- JFJEWISH FEDERATIONone grant, 2017 · $29k
- AFAMERICAN FUNDRAISER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $12k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $9k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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.
Mass general brigham health plan's mission is to promote the health and wellness of our members, and to help ensure equitable, affordbale health care for the diverse communities we serve.
Bridgespan's mission is to build a better world by strengthening the ability of mission-driven organizations and philanthropists to achieve breakthrough results in addressing society's most important challenges and opportunities.
Our mission is to invest in and accelerate the development of the most promising future leaders in biomedical research with global impact.
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Mass general brigham incorporated is developing an integrated health care delivery system throughout the region that offers patients a continuum of coordinated, high-quality care.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. activate partners with u.s. based funders, research institutions, and other pillars of the hard technology community to help entrepreneurial…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Commonwealth care alliance, inc.'s mission is to improve the health and well-being of people with significant needs by innovating, coordinating and providing the highest quality, individualized care.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Gerrish Family Foundation. 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 36 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 144 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 HEALTHCARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds WHITE SNAKE PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds DANA-FARBER INC ↗
- Who funds PAN-MASSACHUSETTS CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds LIVE LIFE BY MUSIC INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds EAGLE HILL FOUNDATION OF MASSACHUSETTSINC ↗
- Who funds HOOPS AND HOMEWORK INC ↗
- Who funds PROVISION MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds THE GERRISH FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Straight Ahead Ministries 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: Greater Worcester Community Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · Coghlin Family Foundation · The Fred Harris Daniels Foundation · The Fletcher Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Melvin S Cutler Charitable Foundation · The White Companies Charitable Trust · Stoddard Charitable Trust · United Way of Central Massachusetts Inc · DCU for Kids
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 Sumner & Lois Herman Charitable 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.
- Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts Inc — 74% of income from government
- Veterans Inc — 58% of income from government
- The Home for Little Wanderers Inc — 38% of income from government
- Straight Ahead Ministries Inc — 27% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Jewish Healthcare Center Inc — 15% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Sudbury Valley Trustees Inc — 11% of income from government
- White Snake Projects Inc — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Hoops and Homework Inc — 5% of income from government
- Old Sturbridge Inc — 4% of income from government
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- Cambridge College Inc — 1% of income from government
- Worcester County Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Boston Ballet Inc — 0% of income from government
- Springfield Partners for Community Action Inc — 0% of income from government
- Rosie's Place Inc — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 0% of income from government
- Boston Foundation Inc — 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 Sumner & Lois Herman Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Sumner & Lois Herman Charitable 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.