· Private foundation
Earl & Brenda Shapiro 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
56% of Earl & Brenda Shapiro Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Brown University, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 11 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $74k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $975k
- $250k+2 grants · $2.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Brown University | $2,000,000 |
| The Trustees of Princeton University | $500,000 |
| University of Chicago - Division Social Science | $130,000 |
| Steppenwolf Theatre Company | $125,000 |
| Inside Climate News | $125,000 |
| Nourishing Hope | $100,000 |
| University of Chicago | $100,000 |
| The Aspen Institute | $100,000 |
| Anti-Defamation League | $100,000 |
| One World Network of Schools | $75,000 |
| Wild Salmon Center | $70,000 |
| Yale School of Architecture | $50,000 |
| Northwestern Memorial Foundation | $34,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $15,000 |
| VIA Art Fund | $15,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $10k) 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 +81% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 2 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $49k 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
- STSTEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY2× · 2023–2024 · $250k · revenue +129%
- ICINSIDE CLIMATE NEWS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $250k · revenue +81%
- NHNOURISHING HOPE2× · 2023–2024 · $200k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- BUBrown Universityone grant, 2022 · $2.0M
- AIArt Institute Chicago - Exhibitions Trustone grant, 2022 · $250k
- AIArt Institute of Chicago - Exhibitions Trustone grant, 2023 · $250k
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.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Lookingglass theatre company is a national leader in the creation and presentation of innovative, cutting-edge theatrical work. lookingglass interweaves movement, circus arts and narrative in original and captivating ways. guided by an…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Leap Inc. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 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.
26 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. 26 of the 77 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 BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds WILD SALMON CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SkyArt NFP ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
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: Reva and David Logan Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Earl & Brenda Shapiro 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.
- Wild Salmon Center — 49% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 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.