· Public charity
Columbia College Chicago
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 2 grants below total $10,750 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $78,381,572 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $78,370,822 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Filter Photo NFP | $5,750 |
| Grant Park Orchestral Association | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +44% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- FPFILTER PHOTO NFP7× · 2017–2023 · $37k · revenue +11%
HYDE PARK ART CENTER2× · 2017–2019 · $15k · revenue +44%- NSNEAR SOUTH PLANNING BOARD2× · 2018–2019 · $13k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- CIChicago International Film Festival Inc Cinema-Chicagograduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +103%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +45%
- TCTHE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTSone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +23%
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.
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
Develop, promote and increase awareness of latino cultures among latino communities through film and video events, education and other art forms
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.
The Organization plans and produces the two day Hyde Park Jazz Festival, enhances cultural opportunities in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and supports the Arts in Chicago.
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,…
To cultivate a growing international culture of listening.
The Chicago Cultural Alliances mission is to connect, promote, and support centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive Chicago. We are an active consortium of 50 cultural heritage museums, centers, and historical societies that…
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.
Chicago Film Archives is a regional archive dedicated to identifying, collecting, preserving, and providing access to films that represent the Midwest.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Arts Alliance and the most unlike its peers is Midwest Film Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 14 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 FILTER PHOTO NFP ↗
- Who funds Chicago International Film Festival Inc Cinema-Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEAR SOUTH PLANNING BOARD ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST FILM INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LOOP ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Chicago Loop Alliance Foundation ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds MEDIUM PHOTOGRAPHY INC DBA MEDIUM PHOTO ↗
- 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.
Open a dossier: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jentes Family Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 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.
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.