· Private foundation
Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k155 grants · $925k
- $10k–50k160 grants · $2.8M
- $50k–250k40 grants · $3.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC | $235,500 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY | $185,500 |
| CENTER FOR HEIRS PROPERTY PRESERVATION | $170,500 |
| DUCKS UNLIMITED | $145,500 |
| COASTAL CONSERVATION LEAGUE | $133,500 |
| NATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $120,000 |
| US ENDOWMENT FOR FORESTRY AND COMM | $106,250 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BMR | $106,000 |
| TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $100,500 |
| MITCHELL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN I | $100,000 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC | $100,000 |
| SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER | $95,000 |
| OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE LAND TRUST | $85,500 |
| OPENLANDS | $85,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $304k) 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 +33% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
478 repeat relationships — 293 still active in FY2024, 185 since wound down; 56 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $833k 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
- DUDucks Unlimited Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +89%
- LLLOWCOUNTRY LAND TRUST INC5× · 2019–2023 · $833k · revenue +543%
- CFCenter for Heirs' Property Preservation6× · 2019–2024 · $686k · revenue +258%
Funded once
- SCSouth Carolina Coastal Conservation League Incgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $220k · revenue +49%
- ASAudubon South Carolina state program of the National Audubon Societyone grant, 2021 · $180k
- TBTHE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOISone grant, 2021 · $105k
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.
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
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.
On the Boards' mission is to invest in leading contemporary performing artists near and far and connect them to a diverse range of communities interested in forward-thinking art and ideas.
To provide an artistic home for the development and production of contemporary plays that engage and challenge a diverse audience.
To cultivate a growing international culture of listening.
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…
Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.See Schedule O for continuation.For over 40 years,…
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…
Cinema/Chicago, the non-profit 501(c)(3) presenting organization of the Chicago International Film Festival, enriches the community through year-round programming devoted to international and independent cinema. We strengthen communication…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Arts Alliance and the most unlike its peers is Steps 2 Walk 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 27 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
572 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 572 of the 796 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 Ducks Unlimited Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds Center for Heirs' Property Preservation ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPENLANDS ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CAROLINA ENVIRONMENTAL LAW PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAND TRUST ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds SHIRLEY HEINZE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN PLANNING COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Association for Community Economic Development ↗
- Who funds THE LAND CONSERVANCY OF MCHENRY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE FOREST PRESERVES ↗
- Who funds CAROLINA ART ASSOCIATION DBA GIBBES MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN PLACE ↗
- Who funds CALUMET COLLARBORATIVE ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION VOTERS OF SC EDUC FUND ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Coastal Conservation League Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago Cultural Alliance ↗
- Who funds Black Arts & Culture Alliance of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON STAGE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds PEE DEE LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
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 Richard H Driehaus Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Walder Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · Illinois Humanities Council Inc · Alphawood Foundation · The Joyce Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · Prince Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation 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 Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley 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.