· Private foundation
Geraldine & Roland Ford 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 67% of GERALDINE & ROLAND FORD FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k8 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $17k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $51k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EPWORTH CHURCH ASSOCIATION | $51,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $16,500 |
| SAINT ANDREW SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $3,500 |
| SAMARITANS PURSE | $2,000 |
| MOORINGS PRESBYERIAN CHURCH | $1,000 |
| GORTON COMMUNITY CENTER | $1,000 |
| MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | $1,000 |
| READING POWER | $1,000 |
| LAKE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $250 |
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 (FY17–25, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
17 repeat relationships — 8 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $221k · revenue +37%
- GCGorton Community Center8× · 2017–2025 · $14k · revenue +158%
- RPREADING POWER INC5× · 2018–2025 · $3k · revenue +166%
Funded once
- ASACTS SCHOOL OF FRONTIER MISSIONSone grant, 2019 · $10k
- HCHistory Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluffgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +43%
- FOFRIENDS OF LAKE FOREST PARKS & REC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%
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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science and…
To expand equitable health care and healthy living in Cook County and champion solutions through funding, education and advocacy.
To solicit and collect donations for the preservation and restoration of lakewood's natural resources, including its landscape, trees, gardens and lake, and its historic monuments, markers and buildings, and for related educational…
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.
NORTHWEST COMMUNITY HEALTHCARE follows the mission of Endeavor Health. The mission of Endeavor Health is to "help everyone in our communities be their best." Central to this mission is a commitment to providing clinical programs and…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Lake County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 33 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 CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Gorton Community Center ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LAKE FOREST PARKS & REC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds READING POWER INC ↗
- Who funds Endeavor Health Clinical Operations ↗
- Who funds THE LAKE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GENEVA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ELAWA FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S CIRCLE ↗
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: Clarks Fork Foundation · Butler Family Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · The Chicago Community Trust · Hunter Family Foundation · Little Orchard Foundation · Hunting Foundation · Fletcher Family Foundation · Garrett Family Foundation · CMB Foundation · Hedberg Foundation Inc · Red Bird Hollow 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 Geraldine & Roland Ford 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Geraldine & Roland Ford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Geraldine & Roland Ford 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.