· Private foundation
Blue Foundation
Its FY2018 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 FY2017–2018.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2018
- Under $10k44 grants · $89k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $170k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $160k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BLUE FUND | $2,147,415 |
| ASPEN INSTITUTE | $60,000 |
| METROSQUASH | $50,000 |
| THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS | $25,000 |
| MIDDLE EAST INVESTMENT INITIATIVE | $25,000 |
| THE FIELD MUSEUM | $20,000 |
| METROSQUASH | $20,000 |
| ASPEN INSTITUTE | $15,000 |
| AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS | $15,000 |
| CHICAGO CENTER FOR MUSIC EDUCATION | $10,000 |
| MIDDLE EAST INVESTMENT INITIATIVE | $10,000 |
| MIDDLE EAST INVESTMENT INITIATIVE | $10,000 |
| ASPEN INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| ASPEN INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–18, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2018, 0 since wound down; 15 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (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 FY2018, 13% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.2M 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
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC2× · 2017–2018 · $189k · revenue +243%- ASAFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC2× · 2017–2018 · $39k · revenue +90%
Northwestern University2× · 2017–2018 · $15k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- GWGEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER MILITARY ACADEMYone grant, 2017 · $28k
- IIINGENUITY INCORPORATED CHICAGOone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue -6%
- JHJOHN HOPE PREPARATORY HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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…
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
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…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Metropolitan Museum of Art. 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 43 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
42 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. 42 of the 64 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 THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds METROSQUASH NFP ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST INVESTMENT INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds SUZUKI ORFF SCHOOL FOR YOUNG MUSICIANS ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds THE ALLIANCE FRANCAISEFRENCH HOUSE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds INGENUITY INCORPORATED CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ART FKA MEXICAN FINE ARTS CENTER MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds ERIE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds Cool Classics Inc ↗
- Who funds WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds FREE SPIRIT MEDIA NFP ↗
- Who funds OLD IRVING PARK COMMUNITY CLINIC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · Walder Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · The Joyce Foundation · The Sidley Austin Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago 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 Blue 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% 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 Blue Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Blue 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.