· Private foundation
Frank and Karen Ptak Family Foundation
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $232k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH FOUNDATION OF SOUTH PALM BEACH COUNTY | $32,000 |
| MISERICORDIA HEART OF MERCY CENTER | $29,000 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $27,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| LEARN CHARTER SCHOOL NETWORK | $24,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $21,000 |
| PAWS CHICAGO | $15,000 |
| SPECIAL OPERATIONS WARRIOR FOUNDATION | $14,000 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT CHICAGO | $12,000 |
| BEST FOOT FORWARD FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| MCGRAW YMCA | $11,000 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $10,000 |
| CARES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CURRY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
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, $219k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
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.
17 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 4 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $32k 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
- MHMISERICORDIA HOME6× · 2020–2025 · $154k · revenue +62%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago6× · 2020–2025 · $132k · revenue +27%
- JAJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CHICAGO6× · 2020–2025 · $121k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- AIART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO SUSTAINING FELLOWSone grant, 2020 · $12k
- CYChicago Youth Centersgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +57%
- FFFOUNDATION FOR HOMAN SQUARE F/K/A HOMAN ARTHINGTON FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue -9%
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.
Ann & robert h. lurie children's hospital of chicago is dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
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…
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
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 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 Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
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,…
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Youth Centers and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 45 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 16% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 26 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 MISERICORDIA HOME ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Young Mens Christian Assoc McGaw Inc ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OPERATIONS WARRIOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF SOUTH PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds BEST FOOT FORWARD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago Youth Centers ↗
- Who funds CURRY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR HOMAN SQUARE F/K/A HOMAN ARTHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CARES INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds KOHL CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF GREATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds Mothers Trust Foundation ↗
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: The Chicago Community Trust · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Frank and Karen Ptak 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.
- Curry College — 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.