· Private foundation
Dr Scholl Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k146 grants · $740k
- $10k–50k223 grants · $3.6M
- $50k–250k39 grants · $3.8M
- $250k+2 grants · $750k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Trust for the National Mall | $500,000 |
| University of Notre Dame | $250,000 |
| Saints Faith Hope & Charity Parish | $225,000 |
| Big Shoulders Fund | $200,000 |
| World Central Kitchen Inc | $200,000 |
| Watershed School | $165,000 |
| Rosalind Franklin University | $160,000 |
| Lyric Opera | $150,000 |
| Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress | $150,000 |
| Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union | $150,000 |
| Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest | $150,000 |
| Mayo Clinic | $150,000 |
| Grant Park Music Festival | $135,000 |
| BUILD Inc | $125,000 |
| Center for Strategic and International Studies | $100,000 |
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, $2.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 56% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Dr Scholl Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 50% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 46% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
506 repeat relationships — 346 still active in FY2024, 160 since wound down; 54 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.0M 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
- TFTRUST FOR THE NATIONAL MALL8× · 2017–2024 · $3.6M · revenue +288%
- CFCENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE PRESIDENCY & CONGRESS8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +26%
- BSBig Shoulders Fund8× · 2017–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +67%
Funded once
- ACAMERICAN COMMITTEE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCEone grant, 2017 · $320k
- FOFRIENDS OF THE HYPERBARIC CHAMBERone grant, 2019 · $150k
- MBMANX BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUPone grant, 2020 · $125k
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
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…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
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…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
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.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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 38 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 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% 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.
520 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 520 of the 699 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 TRUST FOR THE NATIONAL MALL ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE PRESIDENCY & CONGRESS ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds THE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWEST ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds ORANGUTAN OUTREACH INC ATTN RICHARD ZIMMERMAN ↗
- Who funds GATES PHILANTHROPY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds WATERSHED SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INC OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOBILE CARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE IN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Green County Family YMCA Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO'S GREEN CITY MARKET PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS OF JOLIET REGION INC ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds THE WILD ANIMAL SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA CENTER FOR RURAL LEADERSHIP PROJECT CENTRAL ↗
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: Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Helen V Brach Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Circle of Service Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · WP & HB White Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Fifth Third Chicagoland Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust
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 Dr Scholl 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.
- Paul's Place Inc — 29% of income from government
- National History Day Inc — 13% of income from government
- Fairleigh Dickinson University — 2% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- National Aquarium Inc — 1% of income from government
- Guitars Over Guns Organization Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Dr Scholl Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Dr Scholl 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.