· Private foundation
Donald R Wilson Jr 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $342k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| US SAILING FOUNDATION | $197,415 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $94,983 |
| Chicago Architecture Biennial Inc | $50,000 |
| University of RI Foundation & Alumni Engagement | $39,952 |
| Navy Seal Foundation INC | $25,000 |
| Shake-A-Leg Miami Inc | $15,000 |
| Callen Lorde Community Health Project Inc | $12,500 |
| Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center Inc | $12,500 |
| Noble Network of Charter Schools | $7,000 |
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | $5,000 |
| Lincoln Park Conservancy | $5,000 |
| University of Chicago | $4,524 |
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 (FY22–25, $133k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +25% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 6 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
University of Chicago7× · 2019–2025 · $9.3M · revenue +25%- CICATO INSTITUTE2× · 2022–2024 · $450k · revenue +37%
- SASHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY4× · 2018–2022 · $80k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGOone grant, 2021 · $400k
- GPGARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY ALLIANCEgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +93%
- PPPlanned Parenthood of Illinoisgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +52%
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.
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science and…
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
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…
The Chicago Cultural Alliances mission is to connect, promote, and support centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive Chicago. We are an active consortium of 50 cultural heritage museums, centers, and historical societies that…
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…
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…
Operation of a nautical history museum.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
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.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and the most unlike its peers is The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 15% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 32 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YACHT CLUB ↗
- Who funds SHAKE A LEG MIAMI INC ↗
- Who funds GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood of Illinois ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL INC ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds The Anti-Cruelty Society ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds NOBLE NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds URBAN GATEWAYS ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL FAIRNESS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION & ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center Inc ↗
- Who funds ALIVE Rescue NFP ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Donald R Wilson Jr 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.
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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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.