· Private foundation
John D and Catherine T Macarthur 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 45% of JOHN D AND CATHERINE T MACARTHUR FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k97 grants · $2.4M
- $50k–250k563 grants · $70M
- $250k+416 grants · $284M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL INC | $21,000,000 |
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $10,000,000 |
| RF CATALYTIC CAPITAL INC | $7,500,000 |
| RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK | $6,500,000 |
| WINDWARD FUND | $5,000,000 |
| RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK | $4,500,000 |
| EMMETT TILL AND MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY INSTITUTE | $4,000,000 |
| URBAN INSTITUTE | $4,000,000 |
| UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION | $3,000,000 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $2,985,897 |
| THE FIELD FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC | $2,750,000 |
| THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST | $2,500,000 |
| JUSTICE INNOVATION INC DBA CENTER FOR JUSTICE INNOVATION | $2,075,000 |
| TRACE MEDIA INC | $2,000,000 |
| LOCAL INDEPENDENT ONLINE NEWS PUBLISHERS INC | $2,000,000 |
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 US giving — 89% of grant dollars ($2.2B). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 11% that went abroad ($282M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $8.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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
Beyond the US — 11% of all-years giving ($282M)
43 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +41% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
1359 repeat relationships — 634 still active in FY2024, 725 since wound down; 184 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $66M 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
- SWSESAME WORKSHOP5× · 2018–2022 · $100M · revenue +33%
- RFResearch Foundation of the City University of New York8× · 2017–2024 · $36M · revenue +22%
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED7× · 2017–2023 · $29M · revenue +202%
Funded once
- ATAfrica Transitional Justice Legacy Fundone grant, 2021 · $5.8M
THE HOWARD UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $5.0M · revenue +2%- IOINSTITUTE OF THE BLACK WORLD 21ST CENTURYone grant, 2021 · $3.0M · revenue -87%
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 international peace institute is an independent, non-profit organization working to strengthen inclusive multilateralism for a more peaceful and sustainable planet. through its research, convening, and strategic advising, ipi provides…
Highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on u.s. foreign policy
The central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is transforming our regional economy, bringing together the ceos of central indiana's largest and most civically engaged employers and university presidents to advance "big picture"…
The common application promotes access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process.
Deliver world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential.
The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to teaching about the Constitution.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher learning in the liberal arts.
The international center of photography is a center where photographs are collected, protected, researched, and exhibited; a place where students of all ages and accomplishments learn to make images and are challenged by technical and…
To advance professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power.
The center for international private enterprise (cipe) is a non-profit global organization that works to strengthen democracy and build competitive, resilient markets in many of the world's most challenging environments. working alongside…
A higher educational institution, providing both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
We unite our global community to advance women's leadership today and tomorrow.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Health and Medicine Policy Research and the most unlike its peers is Sesame Workshop. 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 29 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
1109 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. 1109 of the 2,000 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SESAME WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds Research Foundation of the City University of New York ↗
- Who funds THE MIAMI FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds NIA TERO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Lever for Change ↗
- Who funds THE URBAN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLIMATEWORKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds The Richard H Driehaus Foundation ↗
- Who funds RF CATALYTIC CAPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FIELD FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds PRINCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds PRETRIAL JUSTICE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds COLLECTIVE SHIFT ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy 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: Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Field Foundation of Illinois · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · The Joyce Foundation · Walder Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Reva and David Logan Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Circle of Service Foundation · Alphawood Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Democracy Fund 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 John D and Catherine T Macarthur 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.
- Institute for Sustainable Communities — 100% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Code for Science & Society Inc — 2% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Ceres 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.