· Private foundation
Bryan Cressey and Iliana Sweis Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 89% of BRYAN CRESSEY AND ILIANA SWEIS FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $136k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ABOVE BEYOND FAMILY RECOVERY CENTER | $1,400,786 |
| AVOCET POLYMER TECHNOLOGIES INC | $260,000 |
| HEALTHSPERIEN | $50,000 |
| UIC DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY | $30,000 |
| LAKE FOREST ACADEMY | $30,000 |
| CHICAGO INSTITUTE FOR REBT | $28,000 |
| HARVARD LAW SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $12,500 |
| GATEWAY FOR CANCER RESEARCH | $10,000 |
| PCRM INC | $5,000 |
| REVIVE CENTER FOR HOUSING AND HEALI | $5,000 |
| H FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL WOMAN'S BOA | $5,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY | $5,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $211k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 76% 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 +14% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 7 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $356k 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
- TATHE ADLER PLANETARIUM6× · 2019–2024 · $160k · revenue +14%
NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC5× · 2019–2024 · $120k · revenue +67%- LFLAKE FOREST ACADEMY5× · 2020–2025 · $95k · revenue +50%
Funded once
- CCCRESSEY CARES CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2019 · $200k
- GFGREENLIGHT FUND INCone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +3%
- UCUIC CRANIOFACIAL INSTITUTEone grant, 2023 · $50k
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.
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…
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
City of Hope National Medical Center'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
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
To be the trusted partner in all healthcare decisions and to improve health by providing highly accessible, world-class care and services.
The jonsson cancer center foundation is the single most important vehicle for raising private funds for cancer research at ucla and plays a key role in advancing cancer treatments and care. please see schedule o for additional information.
Asco association promotes the common business interests of its members by: (1) advocating for policies that improve the quality of cancer care; (2) maintaining the highest standards of oncology medical care through programs supporting…
The Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is D4C Cares Inc. 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 39 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 68 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds REVIVE CENTER FOR HOUSING AND HEALING ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREENLIGHT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY FOR CANCER RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds BARRINGTON CHILDRENS CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds SELECT MEDICAL CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds D4C CARES INC ↗
- Who funds Face the Future Foundation ↗
- Who funds STREETWISE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds HOPE THROUGH HEALING HANDS ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IN DEFENSE OF ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds IMERMAN ANGELS ↗
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 · Butler Family Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Bryan Cressey and Iliana Sweis 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.
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Find your warmest path to Bryan Cressey and Iliana Sweis 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.