· Private foundation
Ellen Soren Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 16 grants below total $71,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $88,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $16,500 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k11 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $10,000 |
| LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FDN | $10,000 |
| LURIE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| ANTI-SEMITISM DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $10,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES | $10,000 |
| PAWS | $5,000 |
| LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FDN | $3,000 |
| US HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM | $2,500 |
| UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM | $2,500 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS | $2,000 |
| GREATER CHGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $2,000 |
| HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY FDN | $2,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $1,000 |
| LUMINARTS CULTURAL FDN | $500 |
| ASPCA | $500 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 90% 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.
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 +28% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2022, 15 since wound down; 14 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, 1% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
- LSLYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2021 · $70k · revenue +134%
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago5× · 2017–2021 · $55k · revenue +60%- RMRonald McDonald House Global5× · 2017–2021 · $50k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- SGSUSAN G KOMEN RACE FOR THE CUREone grant, 2017 · $5k
- PCPROSPER CHICAGO INCone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue -72%
- IHILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUMone grant, 2018 · $3k
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.
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
We are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for the northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a leader in: -pediatric health care delivery…
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
We champion the health needs of children and families. we are committed to improving children's health by providing the highest-quality, family centered care, advanced through research and education.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
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."
SRAlab is dedicated to providing the best patient outcomes through the highest-quality clinical care, translational research, scientific discovery and education.
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…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Museum of Contemporary Art 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 48 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.
19 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. 19 of the 40 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 LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds PROSPER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOG FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds CAMP OF DREAMS ↗
- Who funds LUMINARTS CULTURAL FOUNDATION THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds CANCER WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds FOR AUTISTIC KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds Chicago Children's 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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Ellen Soren 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.