· Private foundation
Gamson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k4 grants · $19k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OneGoal | $50,000 |
| Holocaust Memorial Foundation II | $6,097 |
| Hope Chicago | $5,000 |
| The Chicago Innovation Foundation | $5,000 |
| Chai Lifeline | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 41% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +190% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 4 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
- OONEGOAL5× · 2018–2023 · $654k · revenue +7%
- PFPARKS FOUNDATION OF HIGHLAND PARK2× · 2021–2022 · $150k · revenue ×22 · 39% of their budget
Earth Island Institute Inc2× · 2018–2020 · $100k · revenue +190%
Funded once
RAZOM INCone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue -65%- ACAMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEESgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +46%
- PP33one grant, 2022 · $50k
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 scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
The niu foundation's mission is to energize and connect the private sector with the niu community to secure and steward resources that support the future and growth of niu.
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
Ai4all's mission is to ensure that the next generation of ai leaders reflects humanity. ai4all is transforming the pipeline of ai practitioners who will shape ai for the benefit of humanity.
Chapin hall's mission is to improve the well-being of children and youth, families, and their communities through broad-perspective policy research.
Aia chicago foundation invests in chicago's next generation of architectural change-makers by awarding scholarships, grants, and recognition.
Future founders is building the nation's largest inclusive community of intentional young entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial-minded leaders.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hope Chicago Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Chicago Innovation Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 20 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 ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds PARKS FOUNDATION OF HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds RAZOM INC ↗
- Who funds AMHERST COLLEGE TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds PAT TILLMAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO INNOVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Tilting Futures Incorporated ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: 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 Gamson 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.
- Amherst College Trustees — 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.