· Private foundation
36 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k29 grants · $59k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University of Chicago | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Journey Care | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Loblollypop Foundation | $10,000 |
| Shirley Ryan Ability Lab | $5,000 |
| Lurie Childrens Foundation | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Free Spirit Media | $5,000 |
| Chicago High School for the Arts | $5,000 |
| Kenilworth Union Church | $4,500 |
| Fenix | $3,000 |
| United Way | $2,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club | $2,000 |
| Indian Hill Club Scholarship | $2,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $123k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
30 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 10 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24k 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
- HAHoward Area Community Center2× · 2023–2025 · $102k · revenue +52%
- WCWINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE INC4× · 2022–2025 · $52k · revenue +28%
- WTWINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC3× · 2022–2024 · $51k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- TUTrinity United Methodistone grant, 2024 · $5k
- TJTHE JOSSELYN CENTER NFPgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +240%
- OEOld Elm Scholars Foundation2× · 2022–2023 · $2k
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.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 72 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 16% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 50 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 Howard Area Community Center ↗
- Who funds WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds LOBLOLLY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Elea Institute ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds Williams College ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The Springboard Foundation ↗
- Who funds FREE SPIRIT MEDIA NFP ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds HADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds HOBE SOUND COMMUNITY CHEST INC ↗
- Who funds PERSPECTIVES CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MARTIN COUNTY ↗
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: Charles H and Beverly E Shaw Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Dr Scholl Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Center Street Foundation · Frank Family Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 36 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Boys & Girls Club of Martin County — 2% of income from government
- Williams College — 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 36 Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to 36 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.