· Private foundation
Ernsteen 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 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $2,500 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $2,200 |
| CONGREGATION BETH JUDEA | $1,942 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $1,500 |
| CAMP RAMAH | $1,500 |
| THE LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $1,250 |
| MDS (MYELODYSPLASTIC SYNDROMES FOUNDATION INC) | $1,250 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF ILLINOIS | $1,075 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY LAKE COUNTY IL | $1,050 |
| ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $1,050 |
| CONGREGATION B'NAI JEHOSHUA BETH ELOHIM | $1,000 |
| HEBREW UNION COLLEGE - JEWISH INSTITUTE OF RELIGION | $1,000 |
| TOTAL LINK 2 COMMUNITY | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN DIABETES ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| CURRY COLLEGE | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
103 repeat relationships — 69 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250 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
- ADALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC7× · 2019–2025 · $13k · revenue +17%
ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC9× · 2017–2025 · $13k · revenue +145%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY8× · 2018–2025 · $9k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $2k
- BTBREAKTHROUGH T1Dgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +49%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +45%
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.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
2025 was a turbulent year for the medical and health research community, but our commitment to advocating for science never wavered. from pushing back against funding threats to elevating researchers' voices and equipping advocates, we…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
To significantly improve the lives of people with down syndrome through research, medical care, education and advocacy. an important part of this mission is to support the global affiliate organizations that we helped establish and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is March of Dimes Inc and the most unlike its peers is Midwest Australian Shepherd Rescue 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 39 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
89 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. 89 of the 139 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 American Diabetes Association ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE MYELODYSPLASTIC SYNDROMES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood of Illinois ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY LAKE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CURRY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAWNDALE COLLEGE PREPARATORY CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds BRIGHTFOCUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FEED THE CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds MAZON A Jewish Response to Hunger ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds LEUKEMIA RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds THE MAST CELL DISEASE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds National Kidney Foundation 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: AbbVie Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Ernsteen 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
- Christopher Reeve Foundation — 49% of income from government
- The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc — 16% of income from government
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% of income from government
- Curry College — 0% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 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.