· Private foundation
Ernest Wentcher Educational Fund
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $126k
- $10k–50k64 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k9 grants · $979k
- $250k+2 grants · $793k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIV OF ILLINOIS URBANA | $473,652 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $319,566 |
| DEPAUL UNIV | $170,273 |
| UNIV OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO | $153,465 |
| HOWARD UNIVERSITY | $121,356 |
| UNIV OF WISCONSIN | $101,325 |
| LOYOLA UNIVERSITY | $97,500 |
| UNIV OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $97,483 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $87,927 |
| CORNELL UNIV | $84,500 |
| IIT | $65,407 |
| DOMINICAN UNIV | $49,772 |
| MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE | $46,356 |
| SPELMAN COLLEGE | $40,000 |
| UNIV OF CHICAGO | $32,247 |
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 (FY17–19, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
160 repeat relationships — 78 still active in FY2025, 82 since wound down; 9 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $114k 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
- UOUniversity of Michigan9× · 2017–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +202% · 58% of their budget
- DUDEPAUL UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +25%
- LULOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO9× · 2017–2025 · $650k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- GUGEORGETOWN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $14k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $13k
- MTMICHIGAN TECH UNIVERSITYone grant, 2024 · $10k
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 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…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
Endicott college offers students a vibrant academic environment that remains true to its founding principle of integrating professional and liberal arts with experiential learning. for more information see schedule o.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
As the national university of the catholic church in the united states, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the holy see, the catholic university of america is committed to being a comprehensive…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Lewis & clark is a premier private higher education institution offering an exceptional education in an inclusive environment. by fostering critical thinking, innovation, creativity, civic engagement, and leadership, both inside and…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fordham University and the most unlike its peers is The Terry Foundation. 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 80 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
124 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. 124 of the 223 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Emory University ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Spelman College ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds MOREHOUSE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Lake Forest College ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds KNOX COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds ST OLAF COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds BRADLEY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Marquette Bank Education Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Dr Scholl Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Sam & Mary Palumbo Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Verizon Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Ibm International 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 Ernest Wentcher Educational Fund 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 26% of income from government
- Florida Memorial University Inc — 18% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 12% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 11% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 5% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 4% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 2% of income from government
- Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 1% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 0% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 0% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Emerson College — 0% of income from government
- The University of Tampa Incorporated — 0% 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 Ernest Wentcher Educational Fund?
Find your warmest path to Ernest Wentcher Educational Fund 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.