· Private foundation
John D and Alexandra Nichols 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k18 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $217k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $558k
- $250k+3 grants · $4.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $3,275,000 |
| MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $912,750 |
| WRITERS THEATRE | $650,000 |
| WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE | $200,000 |
| WTTW | $158,000 |
| HARRIS THEATER | $100,000 |
| JOFFREY BALLET | $100,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $35,000 |
| UCAN | $30,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $25,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS OF CHICAGO & N ILLINOIS | $12,394 |
| MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
62 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 9 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $41k 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
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO6× · 2020–2025 · $11M · revenue +32%
- TLTHE LOOMIS INSTITUTE D/B/A THE LOOMIS CHAFFEE SCHOOL4× · 2020–2023 · $6.0M · revenue +41%
- WTWriters Theatre Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $2.4M · revenue +12%
Funded once
- HTHARRIS THEATREone grant, 2020 · $226k
- LOLyric Opera of Chicagograduatedone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue +42%
- MAMUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INCone grant, 2024 · $75k · revenue +15%
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 chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
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…
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.
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Operation of a nautical history museum.
The chicago academy for the arts transforms emerging artists through a curriculum and culture which connect intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity to impart the skills to lead and collaborate across diverse communities.
Chicago public art group brings artists and communities together to produce high-quality public art, extending and transforming the tradition of collaborative, community-involved public artwork.
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 Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Arts Alliance and the most unlike its peers is Keynote Productions Nfp. 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 42 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
68 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 68 of the 108 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 ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE LOOMIS INSTITUTE D/B/A THE LOOMIS CHAFFEE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds UCAN ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR HOMAN SQUARE F/K/A HOMAN ARTHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN GATEWAYS ↗
- Who funds INGENUITY INCORPORATED CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR THERAPY THROUGH THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Inc ↗
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 · Charles H and Beverly E Shaw Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Frank Family Foundation · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · The Canning Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins 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 John D and Alexandra Nichols 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.
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Find your warmest path to John D and Alexandra Nichols 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.