· Private foundation
John H Hart 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 $10k26 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $170k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $980k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $150,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| STEPPENWOLF THEATRE | $125,000 |
| CHI ARTS | $115,000 |
| THE JESSICA FUND | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $90,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $50,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $50,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR HEARING & SPEECH | $50,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $50,000 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $50,000 |
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $30,000 |
| CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN | $25,000 |
| SANTA FE OPERA | $15,000 |
| INVEST FOR KIDS | $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 (FY17–24, $134k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 99% 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 +45% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
86 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2024, 44 since wound down; 4 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra8× · 2017–2024 · $787k · revenue +58%
- CTCHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC8× · 2017–2024 · $745k · revenue +35%
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY8× · 2017–2024 · $602k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- TCTHE CHICAGO ACADEMY FOR THE ARTSone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +18%
- EIErikson Instituteone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +14%
- SHSCOTT'S HOUSE INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +174%
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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 chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
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 npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Stuttering Foundation of America. 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 40 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
131 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. 131 of the 179 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 JESSICA FUND ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL LTD ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR HEARING AND SPEECH RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds MUSICAL MOVEMENTS FOR CHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds FIRST SERVE-NM INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Respectacle Inc ↗
- Who funds THINK NEW MEXICO ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds BRENTWOOD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Stuttering Foundation of America ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NEW MEXICO SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS - ARTS INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
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 Abeles Foundation · Santa Fe Community Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Albuquerque Community Foundation · Anchorum St Vincent · Thornburg Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Zell Family 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 H Hart 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% 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 John H Hart Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John H Hart 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.