· Private foundation
Howard L Gottlieb 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $5,009 |
| SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% of your 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 +147% since the first grant, against +43% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 5 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- TPTHE PERLMAN MUSIC PROGRAM INC3× · 2021–2024 · $100k · revenue +147%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra3× · 2021–2024 · $75k · revenue +15%
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC3× · 2020–2025 · $55k · revenue ×16
Funded once
- LOLyric Opera of Chicagograduatedone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue +72%
- GIGICHIGAMIIN INDIGENOUS NATIONS MUSEUM INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $36k · revenue +382%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $34k · revenue +43%
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 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.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
At MusicMi we set a mission for ourselves to provide aspiring young musicians from across the country with an opportunity to study with world-class artists and to provide our students with a music education of the highest artistic…
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.
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
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.
The mission of florida grand opera is to enrich people's lives through an awareness and deeper appreciation of opera while supporting the operations of the greater miami opera and the opera guild, inc. by expanding its reach to diverse…
String Insiders' mission is to inspire violin, viola, and cello students through online and in-person connections to teachers, peers, and a wealth of information that challenges and encourages them in their growth as a musician and helps…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago School of Violin Making Inc and the most unlike its peers is New Israel Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 21 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 THE PERLMAN MUSIC PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GICHIGAMIIN INDIGENOUS NATIONS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ARTSMART ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SCHOOL OF VIOLIN MAKING INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds NEW ISRAEL FUND ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds Mount Vernon Virtuosi Inc ↗
- Who funds Southern Methodist University ↗
- Who funds Midwest Young Artists ↗
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 · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Howard L Gottlieb 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 Howard L Gottlieb Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Howard L Gottlieb 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.