· Private foundation
Edith Marie Appleton 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.
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 $10k3 grants · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $40k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE GOODMAN THEATRE | $50,000 |
| JOHN DAVID MOONEY FDN | $30,000 |
| THE SWEDISH AMERICAN FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL CAMBODIAN HERITAGE MUSEUM | $2,500 |
| BINDHOUSE INC | $1,000 |
| THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% of your 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 +52% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 4 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- CTCHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC6× · 2019–2024 · $300k · revenue +52%
- JDJOHN DAVID MOONEY FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2024 · $167k · revenue +336% · 96% of their budget
- LOLEAGUE OF CHICAGO THEATRES3× · 2019–2022 · $7k · revenue +236%
Funded once
- UCUKRAINIAN CONGRESS COMMITTEE OF AMERICAone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -75%
- WSWEST SAN GABRIEL VALLEY YMCAone grant, 2019 · $2k
- BMBENJAMIN MARSHALL SOCIETYone grant, 2021 · $1k
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 Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
League of chicago theatres foundation supports the work of league of chicago theatres through grantmaking and fundraising.
Operation of a nautical history museum.
American Blues Theater is an Ensemble of artists committed to producing new and classic diverse stories that ask the question: What does it mean to be American?
Airlines for america (a4a) vigorously advocates for america's airlines as models of safety, customer service, and environmental responsibility; and as the indispensable network that drives our nation's economy and global…
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.
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…
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…
Chicago Film Archives is a regional archive dedicated to identifying, collecting, preserving, and providing access to films that represent the Midwest.
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.
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Northwoods Animal Shelter. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 27 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 CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds JOHN DAVID MOONEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds BUTTERNUT-FRANKLIN LAKES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SwedishAmerican Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CHICAGO THEATRES ↗
- Who funds UKRAINIAN CONGRESS COMMITTEE OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds NORTHWOODS ANIMAL SHELTER ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds THE AOPA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS 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: Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Edith Marie Appleton 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Edith Marie Appleton Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Edith Marie Appleton 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.