· Private foundation
Gavlin 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k92 grants · $84k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| QUEER ASTERISK | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOC | $3,500 |
| LAMBDA LEGAL | $3,000 |
| RELIGIOUS ACTION CENTER | $3,000 |
| COLORADO GIVES | $2,736 |
| FOOD BANK OF THE ROCKIES | $2,500 |
| CHICAGOLAND EXOTIC ANIMAL RESCUE | $2,500 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $2,045 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $2,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $2,000 |
| DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE | $1,534 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $1,505 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $1,500 |
| U N REFUGEE AGENCY | $1,500 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $1,500 |
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, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +29% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
105 repeat relationships — 73 still active in FY2025, 32 since wound down; 19 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- QAQUEER ASTERISK6× · 2020–2025 · $60k · revenue +134%
- ASADA S MCKINLEY COMMUNITY SERVICES INC5× · 2021–2025 · $10k · revenue +60%
- CECHICAGOLAND EXOTIC ANIMAL RESCUE4× · 2022–2025 · $10k · revenue +148%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSINone grant, 2021 · $3k
- UOU OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $3k
- UOU OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $2k
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
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.
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…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Agu's mission is to advance and support an inclusive community of earth and space scientists and partners dedicated to discovery and solutions to societal challenges. agu seeks to catalyze discovery and solutions to scientific and societal…
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Colorado Gives Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Mojave Center Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 42 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
127 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. 127 of the 214 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 QUEER ASTERISK ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ROBERT R MCCORMICK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ADA S MCKINLEY COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGOLAND EXOTIC ANIMAL RESCUE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Colorado Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK ENSEMBLE THEATER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds COLORADO GIVES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds MORRIS ANIMAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITING VOICES ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds ENERGY OUTREACH COLORADO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds NMDP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FEED THE CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds National Women's Health Network ↗
- Who funds DENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Architecture Foundation ↗
- Who funds WESTMONT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE WILD ANIMAL SANCTUARY ↗
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 · Circle of Service Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Colorado Gives Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Denver Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Howard S Dubin Family Foundation · Robert R McCormick 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 Gavlin 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.
- Epilepsy Foundation of America — 22% of income from government
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% 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.