· Private foundation
Elizabeth F Cheney Foundation
Its FY2022 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 FY2017–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k51 grants · $187k
- $10k–50k30 grants · $598k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $100,000 |
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $40,000 |
| NU SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $40,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $40,000 |
| GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL | $40,000 |
| WFMT | $40,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,000 |
| JOFFREY BALLET | $25,000 |
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $20,000 |
| STEPPENWOLF THEATRE | $20,000 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $20,000 |
| EVANSTON HISTORY MUSEUM | $20,000 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF ROCHESTER & MONROE CITY | $20,000 |
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 (FY21–21, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 Elizabeth F Cheney 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, 93% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 82% — 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 +33% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
104 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2022, 62 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $134k 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
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra6× · 2017–2022 · $731k · revenue +58%
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago6× · 2017–2022 · $699k · revenue +33%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO6× · 2017–2022 · $590k · revenue +45%
Funded once
- GTGOODMAN THEATERone grant, 2020 · $46k
- FMFIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +22%
- SSTEPPENWOLFone grant, 2020 · $20k
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.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Constellation is a performing arts presenter with an emphasis on forward- thinking practices, particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
Ballet Chicago is a professional track school of ballet that creates exceptional dancers. It makes classical ballet training accessible to all. Its founders Daniel Duell and Patricia Blair carry on George Balanchines legacy by providing…
To use multiple artistic forms (primarily dance and music) and the combined talents of our diverse company to convey intense personal narratives. We are proudly and visibly multicultural, exploring the intersection of heritage, culture,…
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious.
To enrich the lives of our community through dance education and performance while developing Chicago's native talent pool in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism & ethnic diversity.
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble is a professional Equity company dedicated to elevating the lives of women through the power of theatre.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Iowa Wesleyan University. 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 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
77 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. 77 of the 184 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 Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds THIRD COAST PERCUSSION NFP ↗
- Who funds EVANSTON HISTORY CENTER ↗
- Who funds CIVITAS ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHORALE ↗
- Who funds NORTHLIGHT THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Victory Gardens Theater ↗
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: Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Prince Foundation · The Irving Harris Foundation · Walder Foundation · John R Halligan Charitable Fund · Alphawood Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois
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 Elizabeth F Cheney 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 Elizabeth F Cheney Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Elizabeth F Cheney 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.