· Private foundation
Armin and Esther Hirsch Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k71 grants · $254k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $493k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CUREHHT | $75,000 |
| DISCOVERY EYE FOUNDATION | $37,000 |
| CENTER ON HALSTED | $35,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATIONMALNATI BRAIN TUMOR INSTITUTE | $35,000 |
| CAMP CHI | $35,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| COMMUNITY ALTERNATIVES UNLIMITED | $35,000 |
| CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS | $35,000 |
| AACF | $25,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $25,000 |
| ALL STARS PROJECT | $20,000 |
| JUF PATH TO PARENTHOOD | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE AFTERMARKET FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| NORTHWOOD UNIV | $15,000 |
| U OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATIONTOM BECKHAM FUND | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $254k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 50% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
138 repeat relationships — 63 still active in FY2025, 75 since wound down; 33 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $269k 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
HHT FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $360k · revenue +450%- CFCONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC6× · 2020–2025 · $280k · revenue +124%
THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH6× · 2020–2025 · $245k · revenue +150%
Funded once
- JIJUF ISRAEL EMERGENCY FUNDone grant, 2023 · $95k
- HBHOMEWARD BOUND OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $57k · revenue +51%
- IWILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -4%
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.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
Heartland alliance health's mission is to transform healthcare for the most vulnerable, particularly people experiencing homelessness, mental illness or addictions, or struggling with multiple chronic illnesses, improving health for all…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
The aids foundation of chicago mobilizes communities to create equity and justice for people living with and vulnerable to hiv and related chronic disease.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Klairmont Kollections Automotive Museum. 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 31 years old; the field is 20. 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 — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
116 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. 116 of the 271 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 HHT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Childrens Oncology Services Inc ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALL STARS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Curing Kids Cancer Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds DUPAGE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Northwood University ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY EYE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR DISASTER PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds HOMEWARD BOUND OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds LOU MALNATI - CANCER RESEARCH FUND ↗
- Who funds Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation ↗
- Who funds North Central College ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Howard Brown Health Center ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ALTERNATIVES UNLIMITED ↗
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 Chicago Community Trust · AbbVie Foundation · The Earl and Bettie Fields Automotive Group Foundation Inc · Dr Scholl Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · First Bank Chicago Foundation · Give N Kind · Circle of Service Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Chicago Foundation for Women · Robert R McCormick 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 Armin and Esther Hirsch 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.
- Hht Foundation — 30% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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.