· Private foundation
Fletcher 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $93k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $175k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS | $115,750 |
| ELAWA FARM FOUNDATION | $59,700 |
| FOREST PARK CONSERVANCY | $40,500 |
| LAKE FOREST COLLEGE | $20,000 |
| LAKE FOREST GARDEN CLUB | $12,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| LAKE FOREST CANCER CENTER | $10,000 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL | $9,350 |
| CHISAGO LAKES AREA MIDDLE SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $5,000 |
| CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH | $5,000 |
| RAVINIA NURSERY SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT | $5,000 |
| DRAGON DIVAS | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY CHURCH | $3,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $78k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +41% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 29 since wound down; 4 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- LFLAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION5× · 2021–2025 · $447k · revenue +30%
- EFELAWA FARM FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $391k · revenue +256%
- CACOURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES OF COOK COUNTY6× · 2017–2023 · $98k · revenue +382%
Funded once
- SJSt John's Churchone grant, 2017 · $25k
- BLBETHANY LUTHERAN CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $23k
- NCNORTH CROW WING COUNTY FIRST RESPONDERSone grant, 2021 · $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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
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…
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
See schedule o.drake's mission is to provide an exceptional learning environment that prepares students for meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. the drake experience is distinguished…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lake Forest Open Lands Association and the most unlike its peers is Camp Out for Kids. 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 49 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 12% 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.
49 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. 49 of the 89 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 LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ELAWA FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES OF COOK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Beverly Arts Center of Chicago ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST GARDEN CLUB ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Mothers Trust Foundation ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN MINISTRY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Lake Forest College ↗
- Who funds Gorton Community Center ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA NURSERY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Neighborhood Outreach Connection ↗
- Who funds THE LOFT INC ↗
- Who funds Dragon Divas ↗
- Who funds CAMP OUT FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff ↗
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: Butler Family Foundation · Clarks Fork Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Sheffield Foundation · Little Orchard Foundation · Hedberg Foundation Inc · Red Bird Hollow Foundation · Woodward Family Charitable Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Garrett Family 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 Fletcher 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Fletcher Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Fletcher 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.