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· Public charity
Columbia College Chicago
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
$78M
Granted FY2023
2
Grants
1
Communities
$6k
Largest
01What you fund
0189% classified
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2018–2023.
Arts & Culture$51kEducation$15kCommunity Improvement$13kOther$10k
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2019
artistschildrenartcultural
2020
—
2021
—
2022
clafbenefitbusinessesloop cla
2023
—
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2023 · 2 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
$5,750
Median grant
1
States reached
$477M
Total assets
Largest grants
- Filter Photo NFP$5,750
- Grant Park Orchestral Association$5,000
02The need
04
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.
show:
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 12%. 100% of your dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your field
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.
1
Chicago Opera Theater
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.
Arts & Culture
2
Chicago Humanities Festival
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
Arts & Culture
3
ChiArts Foundation
Support and promotion of arts education programs at chicago high school for the arts
Education
4
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, a not-for-profit corporation, is both a museum and an institution of higher education that exists to provide appreciation and education in visual fine arts and design.
Education
5
Classical Music Chicago
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Arts & Culture
6
The Chicago Academy for the Arts
The chicago academy for the arts transforms emerging artists through a curriculum and culture which connect intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity to impart the skills to lead and collaborate across diverse communities.
—
7
Hyde Park Jazz Festival
Produce annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival and support the arts in Chicago
Arts & Culture
8
Chicago Cultural Alliance
To connect, promote and support centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive and culturally vibrant region.
Arts & Culture
9
Chicago Public Art Group
Chicago public art group brings artists and communities together to produce high-quality public art, extending and transforming the tradition of collaborative, community-involved public artwork.
Arts & Culture
10
Chicago Art Department
Cultivates new and emerging Chicago artists, and aims to benefit artists by exploring art and learning. Through exhibitions, artist residencies, classes/workshops and community building, we are dedicated to cultivating new voices, ideas,…
Arts & Culture
11
Chicago Filmmakers
To serve independent film and digital video artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts works, and to serve Chicago audiences by screening artistically innovative, socially relevant, and diverse films and videos.
Arts & Culture
12
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
Arts & Culture
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hyde Park Art Center and the most unlike its peers is Chicago Loop Alliance Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
8/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Arts & Culture$51,250Education$15,250Community Improvement$12,500Other$10,102
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 Filter Photo NFP ↗
- Who funds Near South Planning Board ↗
- Who funds The Chicago High School for the Arts ↗
- Who funds Hyde Park Art Center ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LOOP ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARTS ALLIANCE ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds Grant Park Orchestral Association ↗
- Who funds Old Town School of Folk Music ↗
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.
John D and Catherine T MacarthurIL17.5× affinity6 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: John D and Catherine T Macarthur · The Chicago Community Trust · Jentes Family Foundation · Zell Family Foundation · Richard and Mary L Gray Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · 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 organisation Columbia College Chicago 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
04Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: Filter Photo NFP.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
medium risk
~3 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
8 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 462070232 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on Filter Photo NFP, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- WatchFinancial stability— Roughly 3 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2025; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 3% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Columbia College Chicago?
Find your warmest path to Columbia College Chicago through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines