· Private foundation
Frankel Julius N 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k19 grants · $530k
- $50k–250k28 grants · $2.3M
- $250k+4 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $1,366,054 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $375,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION | $275,000 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $250,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $200,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $175,000 |
| THE JOFFREY BALLET OF CHICAGO | $115,000 |
| LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER | $110,000 |
| WTTW CHANNEL 11 | $100,000 |
| LA RABIDA CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO HOUSE AND SOCIAL SERVICE | $100,000 |
| STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER | $100,000 |
| MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE | $90,000 |
| GOODMAN THEATER | $90,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $2.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +22% for the ones you funded once.
63 repeat relationships — 51 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago8× · 2018–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +31%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago6× · 2018–2025 · $1.5M · revenue +41%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra8× · 2018–2025 · $1.4M · revenue +54%
Funded once
- SMST MARY'S HOMEone grant, 2018 · $50k
- NUNORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $50k
- AAAbove and Beyond Family Recovery Center NFPone grant, 2024 · $40k · revenue 0%
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 chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired and the most unlike its peers is Court Theatre Fund. 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 60 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 69 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 Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds La Rabida Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Lawrence Hall ↗
- Who funds MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLDS ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds DEBORAH'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds Chicago Youth Centers ↗
- Who funds LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES AND MAINTENANCE FOR THE ELDERLY INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS ↗
- Who funds CASA CENTRAL SOCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD ACADEMY ↗
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 · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Patrick and Anna M Cudahy Fund · The Irving Harris Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois
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 Frankel Julius N 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.