· Private foundation
Harper Court Arts Council Inc
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k13 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $70k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Creative Chicago Reuse Exchange | $10,000 |
| The Experimental Station | $10,000 |
| Hyde Park School of Dance | $10,000 |
| Hyde Park Jazz Festival | $10,000 |
| Hyde Park Art Center | $10,000 |
| Court Theatre Fund | $10,000 |
| Hyde Park Neighborhood Club | $10,000 |
| Hyde Park Youth Symphony | $9,500 |
| South East Chicago Commission | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,500 |
| Smart Museum | $3,000 |
| Options For Youth | $3,000 |
| Project Fielding | $3,000 |
| Children's Book Fair of Hyde Park | $3,000 |
| Definition Theatre Company | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $134k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against -19% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2023, 5 since wound down; 9 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- HPHyde Park School of Dance7× · 2017–2023 · $130k · revenue +26%
- HPHYDE PARK NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB7× · 2017–2023 · $128k · revenue +122%
- HPHyde Park Jazz Festival7× · 2017–2023 · $126k · revenue +125%
Funded once
- FLFRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUSTone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -19%
- HPHYDE PARK SUZUKI INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2017 · $2k
- 5S57TH STREET CHILDRENS BOOK FAIRone grant, 2018 · $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.
To enrich the lives of our community through dance education and performance while developing Chicago's native talent pool in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism & ethnic diversity.
The Hyde Park Theatre located in Austin, Texas was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation for the purpose of producing and presenting contemporary performance and contemporary visual art.
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Open Space Arts is a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to producing bold LGBTQ-focused theater and presenting independent queer cinema. The organization supports emerging and established artists while engaging audiences through live…
The Design Museum of Chicago strives to inspire, educate and innovate through design. As a resource for the Chicago design community and beyond, the museum facilitates an open dialogue about contemporary and historical design through…
The Story Theatre will pose questions, rather than provide answers. We develop and produce new work that is whimsical, melancholic, mythic in vision, and intimate in scale. We are run by a governing artistic ensemble, who ensures our work…
The Haymarket Opera Company aims to enrich the musical community of Chicago and the Midwest with performances of 17th & 18th Century opera using period instruments in the orchestra and historically informed vocal practices and staging…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hyde Park Art Center and the most unlike its peers is Court Theatre Fund. 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 35 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 13% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 28 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 Hyde Park School of Dance ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB ↗
- Who funds Hyde Park Jazz Festival ↗
- Who funds THE EXPERIMENTAL STATION ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE CHICAGO REUSE EXCHANGE ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITING VOICES ↗
- Who funds SOUTH EAST CHICAGO COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds Hyde Park Youth Symphony Inc ↗
- Who funds Friends of Ray School PTO ↗
- Who funds THE DUSABLE BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM AND EDUCATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUST ↗
- Who funds Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference ↗
- Who funds Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company ↗
- Who funds Hyde Park Refugee Project ↗
- Who funds DEFINITION THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds OPTIONS FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds Ecosystems of Care ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHORALE ↗
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 Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Doug and Betsey Schwab and Family Foundation Inc · Builders Vision Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · League of Chicago Theatres Foundation · The Allstate Foundation · Reva and David Logan Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · The Joyce 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 Harper Court Arts Council Inc 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
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Find your warmest path to Harper Court Arts Council Inc 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.