· Private foundation
Helen and Curtis Pinnell 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k40 grants · $178k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $371k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lyric Opera of Chicago | $100,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $30,000 |
| Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum | $25,000 |
| Big Shoulders Fund | $25,000 |
| Handel Week Incorporated | $25,000 |
| Chicago Symphony Orchestra | $20,000 |
| Loaves Fishes of Rio Grande Valley | $20,000 |
| Pacific Garden Mission | $20,000 |
| Evangelical Child and Family Agency | $18,000 |
| Facing Forward to End Homelessness | $18,000 |
| Housing Forward | $18,000 |
| Haymarket Opera Company | $15,000 |
| Misericordia Foundation | $15,000 |
| Window to the World Communications | $15,000 |
| Beyond Hunger | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $282k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 67% 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 +24% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
75 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 10 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $46k 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
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago4× · 2022–2025 · $335k · revenue +3%
- HWHandel Week Incorporated6× · 2020–2025 · $138k · revenue +126% · 81% of their budget
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY6× · 2020–2025 · $130k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- CACHICAGO ARTS AND MUSIC PROJECTone grant, 2024 · $7k · revenue 0%
- GEGrace Episcopal Church - Childrensone grant, 2020 · $5k
- UOUniversity of Chicago fbo Brown Musone grant, 2020 · $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.
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.
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
To excite, engage, and transform diverse audiences with the beauty and power of music.
Chicago sun-times serves the public interest by strengthening the well-being of our local communities and our democracy through independent local journalism.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Operation of a nautical history museum.
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Handel Week Incorporated. 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 43 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 92 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 Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Handel Week Incorporated ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds FACING FORWARD TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
- Who funds HOUSING FORWARD ↗
- Who funds EVANGELICAL CHILD AND FAMILY AGENCY ↗
- Who funds BEYOND HUNGER ↗
- Who funds FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Opera Theatre of Saint Louis ↗
- Who funds SIT STAY READ INC ↗
- Who funds SEA TURTLE INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH PADRE ISLAND BIRDING & NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds Maywood Fine Arts Association ↗
- Who funds THE HAYMARKET OPERA COMPANY NFP ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds THE BLOC ↗
- Who funds FUTURE TIES INC NFP ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST SHELTER FOR HOMELESS VETERANS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds PORT MANSFIELD VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT ↗
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 · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Helen V Brach Foundation · Healthy Communities Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Motorola Solutions 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 Helen and Curtis Pinnell 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% 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.
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