· Private foundation
Hecktman Family Foundation
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 $10k5 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $123k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $463k
- $250k+1 grant · $467k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTERS OF CHICAGO | $466,986 |
| THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $166,263 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $101,900 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $95,000 |
| GOOD CAUSES | $50,000 |
| THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF JEWISH LA PAZ | $46,200 |
| YUTH GUIDANCE | $24,800 |
| US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $15,000 |
| IMPACT ISRAEL FKA FRIENDS OF YEMINE ORDER | $15,000 |
| IL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM & EDUCATION CENTER | $12,000 |
| SHOLL-FREEDE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| GEMACH HARABBONIM NFP | $5,000 |
| THE TIBET FUND | $4,800 |
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 (FY18–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 64% 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 +44% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 7 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $169k 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
- JCJewish Community Centers of Chicago3× · 2022–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +14%
University of Chicago8× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +56%- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO8× · 2017–2024 · $920k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- CTCRADLES TO CRAYONS INCgraduated5× · 2018–2022 · $103k · revenue +179%
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicagoone grant, 2023 · $95k · revenue +4%- LSLAMPLIGHTERS SHLICHUS ACADEMYone grant, 2017 · $74k
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 institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Federation amplifies our collective strength to make the world a better place for everyone. we assist people in need, impact chicagoans of all faiths; support israel and the jewish people worldwide; respond swiftly to crises; cultivate…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
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.
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
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.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired and the most unlike its peers is Sholl-Freede Foundation. 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 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 4% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 61 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 Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Youth Guidance ↗
- Who funds THE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds CRADLES TO CRAYONS INC ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GOOD CAUSES INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds ALL STARS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FIRE DEPARTMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds United Help Ukraine Inc ↗
- Who funds TIKVA CORP ↗
- Who funds SOLOMON R GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds PROJECT MEDISHARE FOR HAITI INC ↗
- Who funds SHOLL-FREEDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMP KIDS ARE KIDS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE ART CENTER OF HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Jarvis Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Hecktman 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Project Medishare for Haiti Inc — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Hecktman Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Hecktman 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.