· Private foundation
Crain-Maling Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k74 grants · $210k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $589k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $630k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH EDUCATIONAL MEDIA | $165,000 |
| MERKOS L INYONEI CHINUCH LUBAVITCH OF INDIANA INC | $130,000 |
| BAIS CHANA WOMEN INTERNATIONAL | $77,000 |
| CLARION PROJECT INC | $55,000 |
| NCSY | $53,000 |
| THE BINYAMIN FUND INC | $50,000 |
| GASTROINTESTINAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| CARING FOR FRIENDS | $30,000 |
| CHAMAH | $30,000 |
| JEWISH NATIONAL FUND | $30,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $29,500 |
| THE COVE SCHOOL | $28,000 |
| WTTW | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $118k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 78% 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 +52% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
115 repeat relationships — 85 still active in FY2024, 30 since wound down; 23 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $77k 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
- JEJEWISH EDUCATIONAL MEDIA5× · 2020–2024 · $555k · revenue +62%
- MLMERKOS L INYOUNEI CHINUCH LUBAVITCH OF INDIANA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $540k · revenue +145%
- GIGASTRO INTESTINAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $352k · revenue +584%
Funded once
- AAAJC - AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEEone grant, 2020 · $60k
- LOLUBAVITCH OF WISCONSIN INCone grant, 2023 · $30k
- NSNORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +53%
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.
Religious School
To further jewish education in israel
Support for study of torah and chasiddus in ramat shilo, israel
encourage and facilitate the observance of traditional orthodox Jewish practices around the world.
To foster jewish religious education and disseminate the teachings of rabbi nachman of breslov through publication and distribution of books and cds, as well as seminars, lectures and study groups.
publish religious books
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Birthright Israel Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 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 23 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
88 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. 88 of the 183 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 JEWISH EDUCATIONAL MEDIA ↗
- Who funds MERKOS L INYOUNEI CHINUCH LUBAVITCH OF INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds GASTRO INTESTINAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BAIS CHANA WOMEN INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds Binyamin Fund Inc DBA The Heart of Israel ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds CONGREGATION HAMERKAZ INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds The Avner Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema NFP ↗
- Who funds THE HINDA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MENACHEM EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OPENDOR MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds CLARION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH POCET ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MEZUZAH AND MITZVAH CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds THE COVE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Jewish Communal Fund · Nash Charity Foundation Inc · Rebbe's Partnership Foundation · The Ojc Fund · Saul Schottenstein Foundation C · Walder Foundation · Keren Hachomesh Inc · Lets Make It Happen Ny Inc · Kolel Torah Inc · Associated Jewish Charities of Baltimore · Todd a and Raphaela Stern Family 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 Crain-Maling 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Crain-Maling Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Crain-Maling 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.