· Private foundation
Gordon H & Karen M Millner 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k17 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $125k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LURIE CHILDREN FOUNDATION | $85,000 |
| THE NORA PROJECT | $25,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $20,100 |
| NORTHWESTERN LAKE FOREST HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| SMILETRAINORG | $15,000 |
| PROGERIA RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK | $12,500 |
| JUF OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $10,100 |
| JUF OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $7,500 |
| DONATION GUIDE DOGS | $5,000 |
| JNF | $5,000 |
| NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL | $4,500 |
| FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $2,500 |
| BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 23% of your 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.
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.
10 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2023, 4 since wound down; 19 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, 34% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $161k 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
- TNTHE NORA PROJECT2× · 2021–2023 · $50k · revenue -43%
- NMNorthwestern Memorial Foundation2× · 2021–2022 · $40k
- NMNORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE2× · 2021–2023 · $40k
Funded once
- LCLurie Children's Hospital of Chicago Foundationone grant, 2022 · $85k
- LCLurie Children's Foundationone grant, 2021 · $65k
- TNThe Nora Projectone grant, 2022 · $28k
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 hugo w. moser research institute at kennedy krieger, inc. (the "research institute") is an internationally recognized research facility finding answers to problems and injuries that affect a child's developing brain. researchers have…
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
To significantly improve the lives of people with down syndrome through research, medical care, education and advocacy. an important part of this mission is to support the global affiliate organizations that we helped establish and…
To cure cf and provide all people with cf the opportunity to lead long, fulfilling lives by funding research and drug development, partnering with the cf community, and advancing high-quality, specialized care.
Our mission is to expand scientific knowledge and improve public health by designing and conducting world-class clinical trials and epidemiologic research.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
To accelerate the development of breakthrough discoveries that will transform the lives of people living with food allergies.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
Please see schedule o
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cerebral Palsy Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Parks Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 55 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) — 0% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 57 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 THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PROGERIA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL GUIDE DOG CENTER FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds KOOLEN-DE VRIES SYNDROME FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Baird Foundation Inc · Synchrony Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Ge Aerospace Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Gordon H & Karen M Millner 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.
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 Gordon H & Karen M Millner Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gordon H & Karen M Millner Family 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.