· Private foundation
David and Kirsten Cunningham Charitable 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 48% of DAVID AND KIRSTEN CUNNINGHAM CHARITABLE 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $4k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $211k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $257k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $78,381 |
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $75,146 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $52,834 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $50,259 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $49,834 |
| ST ISAAC JOGUES | $40,282 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $25,207 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO | $25,207 |
| MISERICORDIA | $15,202 |
| BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES | $15,202 |
| CARENET PREGNANCY SERVICES OF DUPAGE COUNTY INC | $15,202 |
| INSPIRATION CORPORATION | $15,202 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE | $10,040 |
| BUTTERFIELD SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM | $2,000 |
| THE O'BRIEN SCHOOL FOR THE MASSAI | $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 (FY17–24, $102k) 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +72% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $81k 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
- BSBig Shoulders Fund7× · 2018–2024 · $350k · revenue +67%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY8× · 2017–2024 · $317k · revenue +140%- ICInspiration Corporation8× · 2017–2024 · $102k · revenue +102%
Funded once
- IFINTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSSone grant, 2017 · $15k
- SFSPONSORS FOR EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +305%
- CRCATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICESone grant, 2018 · $10k
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…
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
We, mercy health system of chicago and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.mercy foundation is a member of mercy health system of chicago…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
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 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…
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
We, at ch, humbly join together to bring christ's healing mission and the mission of mercy of the catholic church expressed in catholic health care to our communities.
To optimize philanthropy in support of the mission and future of the children's hospital of chicago medical center.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
Inspired by the gift of donation from our communities, allosource responsibly provides innovative cellular and tissue allografts to advance patient healing.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is March of Dimes Inc and the most unlike its peers is Starkey Hearing Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 36 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 63 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 Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds CARING NETWORK NFP ↗
- Who funds DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds NEWROOT LEARNING INSTITUTE F/K/A UMOJA STUDENT DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds The Cara Program ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago ↗
- Who funds SPONSORS FOR EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds OBRIEN SCHOOLS FOR THE MAASAI NFP ↗
- Who funds THE H FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PEDIATRIC CANCER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE ANDREW WEISHAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds HINSDALE HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
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: Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 David and Kirsten Cunningham Charitable 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.
- Childrens Cancer Therapy Development Institute — 44% 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.
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How do I get to David and Kirsten Cunningham Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to David and Kirsten Cunningham Charitable 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.