· Private foundation
Daniel R and Karen Kales Lee Family Foundation C/O Karen K Lee
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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 51% of DANIEL R AND KAREN KALES LEE FAMILY FOUNDATION C/O KAREN K LEE’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 · FY2024
- Under $10k26 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $97k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $258k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $125,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS-MAGEN DAVID | $70,000 |
| CJE SENIOR LIFE | $62,700 |
| FRIENDS OF THE IDF | $25,000 |
| AM SHALOM | $23,200 |
| PROVIDENCE FARM COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $18,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM SPRINGS AND DESERT AREA | $11,090 |
| ISRAEL TENNIS & EDUCATION CENTER | $10,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| ISRAEL DOGS FOR THE BLIND | $5,000 |
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO | $5,000 |
| TUTORING CHICAGO | $5,000 |
| THE ARK | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| ROCHELLE ZELL JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $5k) 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.
33 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down; 16 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO8× · 2017–2024 · $931k · revenue +13%
- BBBERNIE'S BOOK BANK7× · 2017–2023 · $83k · revenue +27%
- BCBLOOD CANCER UNITED INC5× · 2017–2024 · $43k · revenue +4%
Funded once
- CFCENTER FOR JEWISH PHILANTHROPYone grant, 2022 · $10k
- ICISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $8k · revenue +27%
- GHGlencoe Historical Societygraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +382%
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 mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
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.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
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…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Michael Reese partners with the Chicagoland community to advance and advocate for lasting health solutions. We do this by carrying forward the vision of Michael Reese Hospital's Jewish founders and the generations of philanthropic…
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…
We are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for the northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a leader in: -pediatric health care delivery…
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc and the most unlike its peers is Providence Farm Community Foundation. 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 33 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 87 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 UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE FARM COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM SPRINGS AND DESERT AREA ↗
- Who funds RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY ACTION NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Glencoe Historical Society ↗
- Who funds TUTORING CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ROCHELLE ZELL JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds RANCHO MIRAGE LIBRARY & OBSERVATORY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Camp for All Kids ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
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 · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · AbbVie Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Bednyak Family Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Imc Chicago Charitable Foundation · The Keith D & Arlene M Bronstein Foundation · Sacks Family Foundation · Jarvis 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 Daniel R and Karen Kales Lee Family Foundation C/O Karen K Lee 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.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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.