· Private foundation
Friedman Linda D 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $18k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROGER BALDWIN FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| SONIA SHANKMAN ORTHOGENIC SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| ANSHE EMET SYNAGOGUE | $25,000 |
| GLESSNER HOUSE | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| LEGAL AID CHICAGO | $7,500 |
| ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| STEPPONWOLF THEATER | $2,750 |
| LAMBDA LEGAL | $1,500 |
| NORTHSHORE SENIOR CENTER | $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 (FY19–25, $31k) 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 9 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; $2k 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
CITY YEAR INC5× · 2019–2023 · $125k · revenue +0%- UJURBAN JUNCTURE FOUNDATION2× · 2022–2024 · $40k · revenue +1%
- EAElastic Arts Foundation2× · 2020–2021 · $15k · revenue +211%
Funded once
- WEWOMEN EMPLOYEDone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue -14%
- LOLEGENDS OF THE BALL INCone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue -54% · 50% of their budget
- AOACLU OF ILLINOISone grant, 2023 · $25k
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.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
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…
Lookingglass theatre company is a national leader in the creation and presentation of innovative, cutting-edge theatrical work. lookingglass interweaves movement, circus arts and narrative in original and captivating ways. guided by an…
The league of chicago theatres is an alliance of theatres, which leverages its collective strength to support, promote and advocate for chicago's theatre industry. through the organization's work, its ensure that theatre continues to…
Pegasus Theatre Chicago is a professional theater approaching 45 years of supporting Chicagos diverse community by producing accessible, socially relevant theatre and promoting the development of new artists for the stage. Our mission is…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
Constellation is a performing arts presenter with an emphasis on forward- thinking practices, particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
To cultivate a growing international culture of listening.
In furtherance of its charitable and educational goals, the Network's activities consist primarily of providing educational opportunities for its members and the public on issues related to the advancement of women in the workplace. As the…
Threewalls is dedicated to fostering contemporary art practices that respond to lived experiences, encouraging connections beyond art through performance, live exhibits, publications, all while connected segregated communities throughout…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Humane World for Animals Inc. 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 33 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 14% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 42 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 CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds MUDDY WATERS MOJO MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WOMEN EMPLOYED ↗
- Who funds LEGENDS OF THE BALL INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN JUNCTURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SKY CARES ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds Jazz Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Elastic Arts Foundation ↗
- Who funds Students Without Mothers Inc ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWEST ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMON GROUND ↗
- Who funds SHELTER FROM THE STORM INC ↗
- Who funds Little Village Environmental Justice Org ↗
- Who funds IMERMAN ANGELS ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds National Alopecia Areata Foundation ↗
- Who funds GALLOPING OUT ↗
- Who funds NORTHLIGHT THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY IN TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Alphawood Foundation · Walder Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · 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 Friedman Linda D 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Friedman Linda D 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.