· Private foundation
The Zisman Family 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $124k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $25,000 |
| KIMMEL CENTER INC | $20,000 |
| WGGB | $15,000 |
| PA BALLET ASSOCIATION | $12,500 |
| BARD COLLEGE | $11,000 |
| PGA REACH PHILADELPHIA | $10,000 |
| AMATEUR GOLF ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| ANNIKA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SETTLEMENT MUSIC SCHOOL | $7,500 |
| PETER'S PLACE | $5,500 |
| MAGEE REHABILITATION HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| PARTNERS FOR SACRED PLACES | $5,000 |
| VALLEY YOUTH HOUSE | $5,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE | $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 (FY21–25, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 4%. 100% 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.
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.
43 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 96% 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
- SSSHIPLEY SCHOOL4× · 2020–2024 · $320k · revenue +23%
- KCKIMMEL CENTER INC5× · 2020–2025 · $244k · revenue +133%
- MGMERION GOLF CLUB2× · 2021–2022 · $100k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- UCURSINUS COLLEGEone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +10%
- UOUS OLYMPIC COMMone grant, 2021 · $25k
- AIACADEMY IN MANAYUNKone grant, 2024 · $20k · revenue +10%
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.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
Germantown academy inspires students to be independent in thought; confident in expression; compassionate in spirit; collaborative in action; and honorable in deed. germantown academy is a private school educating students from pre-k…
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…
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…
The philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
See schedule owe are an inclusive community on a mission to inspire unbounded curiosity and independent thought in every one of our students. in a unique educational environment that extends well beyond campus, we nurture students'…
Whyy is the philadelphia region's leading public media provider, serving southeastern pennsylvania, southern new jersey, and all of delaware.
The organization is an affiliate within thomas jefferson university/jefferson health; a comprehensive professional university and tax-exempt integrated healthcare delivery system ("system"), with a tripartite mission of education, research…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Play on philly provides underserved children in philadelphia, a transformative music education experience that develops and inspires the behaviors and personal skills needed for a successful life.
The philadelphia convention & visitors bureau (phlcvb) is the official tourism promotion agency for the city of philadelphia globally, and the sales and marketing agency for the pennsylvania convention center (pcc). phlcvb markets…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Russell Byers Charter School and the most unlike its peers is The Jerry Segal Classic. 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 40 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 86 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 TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds SHIPLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds KIMMEL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PETER'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds MERION GOLF CLUB ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds URSINUS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY IN MANAYUNK ↗
- Who funds OPERA PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds PGA REACH PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds The Magee Memorial Hospital for Convalescents ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS FOR SACRED PLACES INC ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF THE ROSES ↗
- Who funds THE JERRY SEGAL CLASSIC ↗
- Who funds RUSSELL BYERS CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · The Philadelphia Foundation · Hamilton Family Foundation · Connelly Foundation · The William Penn Foundation · Lindback Cr & Mf Foundation Tw Main · The Barra Foundation Inc · The Neubauer Family Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Patricia Kind Family Foundation · Wsfs Cares Foundation · The Cigna Group 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 Zisman 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.
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 Zisman Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Zisman 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.