· Private foundation
George and Cindy Rusu Family Found
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $165k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $380k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $500,000 |
| HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION | $110,000 |
| AUTOMOTIVE MENTORING GROUP | $100,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $69,500 |
| AEROANGEL | $40,000 |
| SHERWOOD CARES | $40,000 |
| KNICKER OPEN CHARITIES | $25,000 |
| DOODLEBUG WORKSHOP VOC TRN CENTER | $15,100 |
| RECLAIM 13 | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| WE ARE CALLED TO CARE | $15,000 |
| INSPIRATION CORPORATION | $5,000 |
| COUNTRY SHRINE CLUB | $5,000 |
| GLOVES 4 GRIEF INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $507k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of George and Cindy Rusu Family Found’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 6 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $67k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO7× · 2017–2023 · $4.3M · revenue +39%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY4× · 2020–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +17%- AMAUTOMOTIVE MENTORING GROUP INC8× · 2017–2024 · $707k · revenue +120% · 84% of their budget
Funded once
Feeding Americaone grant, 2021 · $750k · revenue +23%- CCCRISIS CENTERone grant, 2023 · $500k
- WPWINGS PROGRAM INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +122%
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.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
We are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for the northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a leader in: -pediatric health care delivery…
Northwestern memorial healthcare is an integrated healthcare system, consisting of multiple hospitals (including northwestern memorial hospital, an academic medical center) and networks of physicians and healthcare professionals, where the…
We champion the health needs of children and families. we are committed to improving children's health by providing the highest-quality, family centered care, advanced through research and education.
Infant welfare society of chicago (iws) (d/b/a iws family health) provides quality medical, dental and behavioral health services for the health, physical and mental development of children and their families in the chicagoland community.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
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…
We, mercy health system of chicago and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.mercy foundation is a member of mercy health system of chicago…
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northern Illinois Food Bank and the most unlike its peers is Fore Griffin Foundation 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 32 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 65 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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds AUTOMOTIVE MENTORING GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AEROANGEL INC ↗
- Who funds DELTA TAU DELTA ↗
- Who funds WINGS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Knicker Open Charities ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Fore Griffin Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds EBOD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TOGETHER RISING ↗
- Who funds THE MAYOR'S FUND FOR LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO ABORTION FUND ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Little Heroes League ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMPASSIONATE COMMUNITIES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds GLOVES 4 GRIEF 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 tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Network for Good · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · National Philanthropic Trust
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 George and Cindy Rusu Family Found 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.
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Guadalupe Center Inc — 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.