· Private foundation
Donald L & Susan J Schwartz 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $250k+1 grant · $258k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ravinia Festival | $258,182 |
| Macalester College | $25,000 |
| Ravinia Festival | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| National Right to Work Foundation | $2,000 |
| Heritage Foundation | $1,000 |
| The Cradle | $1,000 |
| Leadership Institute | $750 |
| Latham Cares | $500 |
| Food Bank for Larimer County | $250 |
| NorthShore Place Holiday Fund Inc | $150 |
| Habitat for Humanity | $113 |
| Chicago Furniture Bank | $100 |
| Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation | $100 |
| Macular Degeneration Research | $100 |
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 (FY17–25, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +58% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
43 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 36 since wound down; 8 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, 98% 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
MACALESTER COLLEGE8× · 2017–2025 · $550k · revenue +90%
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION6× · 2017–2025 · $284k · revenue +54%- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra6× · 2017–2024 · $34k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- DSDONALD & SUSAN SCHWARTZ DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLEone grant, 2024 · $182k
- R2Ravinia 2021 Annual Fundone grant, 2021 · $4k
- NRNational Right to Defenseone grant, 2023 · $3k
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.
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
To advance the practice of higher education attorneys for the benefit of the institutions they serve.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Empowering financial professionals and consumers through world-class advocacy and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Rise International. 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 50 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) — 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 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.
39 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. 39 of the 78 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 MACALESTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds The Cradle Foundation ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds THE RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION AND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds WALNUT COVE MEMBERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Cradle Society ↗
- Who funds SECUREFUTURES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RISE International ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S CIRCLE ↗
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 · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Donald L & Susan J Schwartz 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.