· Private foundation
Ericka and Matthew Thacker Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $76k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $25,525 |
| MISHKAN CHICAGO | $20,945 |
| BEACON ACADEMY A MONTESSORY HIGH SCHOOL | $19,200 |
| BERNARD ZELL ANSHE EMET DAY SCHOOL | $10,361 |
| OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC INC | $3,150 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $2,710 |
| CIRCESTEEM INC | $2,500 |
| TAMARACK CAMPS | $1,800 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF CHICAGO | $1,800 |
| THE JOFFREY BALLET | $1,250 |
| DARE2TRI PARATRIATHLON CLUB | $1,230 |
| MICHIGAN HILLEL | $1,030 |
| LAKOTA CIRCLE | $540 |
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $410 |
| Individual grant recipient | $360 |
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 (FY21–25, $7k) 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 +14% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- BABEACON ACADEMY A MONTESSORI HIGH SCHOOL5× · 2021–2025 · $77k · revenue +14%
- DPDARE2TRI PARATRIATHLON CLUB4× · 2021–2025 · $12k · revenue +18%
- OTOLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC5× · 2020–2025 · $4k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INCone grant, 2023 · $360 · revenue -45%
- TATHE ADLER PLANETARIUMgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $350 · revenue +91%
- FOFRIENDS OF LAKEVIEW HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $300
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.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
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…
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 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.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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…
Committed to exceptional healthcare quality for all and actively engaged with our community, einstein drives scientific discovery and educates compassionate leaders in health and science.
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 Jewish Federation of Detroit and the most unlike its peers is Bronzeville Center for the Arts 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 35 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
56 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. 56 of the 72 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 BERNARD ZELL ANSHE EMET DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BEACON ACADEMY A MONTESSORI HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds DARE2TRI PARATRIATHLON CLUB ↗
- Who funds CIRCESTEEM INC ↗
- Who funds OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF WASHTENAW COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF DETROIT ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds CAMP NEBAGAMON SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN B'NAI B'RITH HILLEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF WHITNEY M YOUNG HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TECHNION ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Windy City Ramblers ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds Jewish Free Loan Chicago Inc ↗
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: Circle of Service Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe Family Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc
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 Ericka and Matthew Thacker 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% 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 Ericka and Matthew Thacker Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ericka and Matthew Thacker Family 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.