· Private foundation
Denise and Gerald Fitzgerald Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ARRUPE COLLEGE OF LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| FORDHAM UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING JESUIT COLLEGE PREP | $7,500 |
| ST ISAAC JOGUES CHURCH | $5,700 |
| DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $2,500 |
| SOUTHWEST WILDLIFE CONSERVATION CENTER | $2,500 |
| UNITED WAY | $2,000 |
| HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| COVENANT HOUSE IL | $1,000 |
| A LEG TO STAND ON | $542 |
| PENN STATE | $515 |
| HINSDALE JUNIOR WOMAN'S CLUB | $504 |
| THE LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $500 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF COLLIER COUNTY | $500 |
| NEW YORK ROAD RUNNERS | $300 |
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 (FY20–25, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 98% 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 +33% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 36% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- ULUNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS4× · 2020–2023 · $32k · revenue +39%
- FUFordham University2× · 2024–2025 · $10k · revenue +9%
- LULOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO3× · 2020–2023 · $5k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- NHNEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH CLINIC INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +42%
- STST THERESA CATHOLIC CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $3k
- FOFriends of Florenceone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +20%
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…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Curesearch's mission is to fund & support targeted & innovative cancer research with measurable results, & to be the authoritative source of information & resources for all those affected by children's cancer. see schedule o for…
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…
Our mission is to invest in and accelerate the development of the most promising future leaders in biomedical research with global impact.
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 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…
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Breakthrough Urban Ministries Inc and the most unlike its peers is Shade Family 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 31 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
78 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. 78 of the 130 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 UNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds Fordham University ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST WILDLIFE CONSERVATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds Friends of Florence ↗
- Who funds IMERMAN ANGELS ↗
- Who funds THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds A LEG TO STAND ON INC ↗
- Who funds BLESSINGS IN A BACKPACK INC ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds COLLIER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROSECRANCE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds SAN MIGUEL FEBRES CORDERO SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds PLEDGELING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD CARE CENTER OF EVANSTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE IRISH GEORGIAN SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Bible Society ↗
- Who funds UNITING VOICES ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOSH BURKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORDER OF ST CAMILLUS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BRAINUP INC ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Chubb Charitable Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · Edmond and Alice Opler Foundation · Full Circle 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 Denise and Gerald Fitzgerald Family 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% 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 Denise and Gerald Fitzgerald Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Denise and Gerald Fitzgerald Family 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.