· Private foundation
Zell Family Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $52k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $56k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TO RISE UP INDUSTRIES | $56,000 |
| GOLDEN RULE REENTRY | $16,000 |
| WOMEN FIRST TRANSITION AND REFERRAL CENTER | $15,000 |
| FREEDOM FARMS | $11,000 |
| BEYOND THESE WALLS | $10,000 |
| GIVE A BEAT FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| THE DOE FUND | $3,000 |
| GSL RESCUE | $3,000 |
| IT TAKES A VILLAGE | $3,000 |
| TO LEAP TO SUCCESS | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| REFUGE POINT | $1,500 |
| CENTER CITY CONCERN | $1,500 |
| MOUNT TAMALPAIS COLLEGE | $1,500 |
| ENGLISH FOR NEW BOSTONIANS | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $181k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 83% 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 +82% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 17 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, 11% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $125k 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
- SESAINT ELIZABETH SHELTER CORPORATION4× · 2017–2021 · $38k · revenue +93%
- AFAVENUES FOR JUSTICE INC3× · 2021–2023 · $26k · revenue +82%
YWCA OF GREATER PORTLAND2× · 2020–2024 · $17k · revenue +104%
Funded once
- DHDISMAS HOUSE OF MASSACHUSETTS INCone grant, 2024 · $41k · revenue -13%
- HIHIAS INCone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue -6%
- MCMOTOR CITY MITTEN MISSIONone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue -50%
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 mission of the st. vincent de paul society of san francisco (svdp-sf) is to offer hope and service on a direct person-to-person basis, working to break the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.
Transition house is a human services agency dedicated to preventing and ending domestic violence. the agency provides a continuum of housing resources and holistic support for survivors of violence and their children, as well as prevention…
Mentorship and housing assistant for women returning from incarceration
Cases' mission is to increase public safety through innovative services that reduce crime and incarceration, improve behavioral health, promote recovery and rehabilitation, and create opportunities for success in the community. we believe…
Community Forward SF's support services create pathways from crisis to long-term stability through our Women's Wellness Pathway, a proven continuum linking a 24/7 drop-in center, shelter, transitional housing, behavioral health care, and…
People who have just been released from prison are typically stigmatized, overlooked, and pigeonholed by society. when they walk into project return, they discover that here they are valued, heard, and encouraged. while reduction of…
The anti-recidivism coalition (arc) works to end mass incarceration in california. to ensure our communities are safe, healthy, and whole, arc empowers formerly and currently incarcerated people to thrive by providing a support network,…
Transitional housing project for ex=offender females
The mission of the organization is to ensure safety and stability for people who are battered, abused, homeless or at risk; to create public awareness about the epidemic of violence; and to mobilize the community to prevent violence and…
To provide community-based housing and comprehensive services to women, including women with children, to support them in overcoming poverty, homelessness, addiction, trauma, and the effects of incarceration, in order to build lives of…
Interim, inc.'s mission is to provide services and affordable housing to supporting members of our community with mental illness in building productive and satisfying lives.
See schedule oadvancing physical and emotional safety by reducing the impact and occurrence of sexual and domestic violence, human trafficking and stalking through inclusive intervention and prevention services for children, youth, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Housing Works and the most unlike its peers is Dignity Village. 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 24 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) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
70 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. 70 of the 87 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 Rise Up Industries ↗
- Who funds GIVE A BEAT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DISMAS HOUSE OF MASSACHUSETTS INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT ELIZABETH SHELTER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds MOTOR CITY MITTEN MISSION ↗
- Who funds VALLEY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AVENUES FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds ALPHA PROJECT FOR THE HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds HOUSING WORKS ↗
- Who funds Womens Community Justice Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Center for Restorative Justice Works ↗
- Who funds MOTHERHOOD BEYOND BARS INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA OF GREATER PORTLAND ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN RULE REENTRY ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SHELTERS & FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Leap to Success ↗
- Who funds Why Not Prosper Inc ↗
- Who funds WOMENFIRST TRANSITION REFERRAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds JEREMIAH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds A SENSE OF HOME ↗
- Who funds BUILDING OPP FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds HomeStart Inc ↗
- Who funds TENDERLOIN NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM FARMS ↗
- Who funds BEYOND THESE WALLS ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds UNITED IN HARMONY ↗
- Who funds RUTH ELLIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE DOE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Humble Design Inc ↗
- Who funds KITCHEN ANGELS INC ↗
- Who funds HILLTOWN VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds FII - NATIONAL ↗
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: Seeding Justice · The Rose Hills Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · The William Penn Foundation · Independence Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Claneil Foundation Inc · The Philadelphia Foundation · Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts · United Way Of Massachusetts Bay Inc · Proteus Fund Inc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc
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 Zell Family Foundation Inc 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Roca Inc — 78% of income from government
- Community Action Pioneer Valley — 62% of income from government
- Golden Rule Reentry — 47% of income from government
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- HomeStart Inc — 20% of income from government
- Ywca of Greater Portland — 15% of income from government
- Red Lodge Transition Services — 12% of income from government
- English for New Bostonians Inc — 11% of income from government
- Hilltown Village — 7% 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
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Find your warmest path to Zell Family Foundation Inc 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.