· Private foundation
Josephine P & John J Louis Foundation Inc
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 $10k33 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $174k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $201k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Brain Chemistry Labs | $100,200 |
| AmeriCares | $51,000 |
| Katie Flowers Endowment | $50,000 |
| Rainforest Trust | $40,000 |
| Chicago Botanical Garden | $35,500 |
| Everglades Foundation | $30,000 |
| Mayo Clinic | $25,000 |
| Deerfield Academy | $12,500 |
| Northshore University Healthcare | $11,000 |
| Northwestern University | $10,000 |
| St Jude's Research Hospital | $10,000 |
| Cable Natural History | $8,000 |
| Williams College | $5,000 |
| John G Shedd Aquarium | $3,000 |
| Paws Chicago | $3,000 |
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 (FY19–22, $650) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 23% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +17% for the ones you funded once.
48 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 11 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $110k 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
- TITHE INSTITUTE FOR ETHNOMEDICINE INC DBA BRAIN CHEMISTRY LABS2× · 2017–2018 · $195k · revenue +48%
- TOTRUSTEES OF DEERFIELD ACADEMY8× · 2017–2024 · $100k · revenue +122%
Northwestern University8× · 2017–2024 · $77k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- PCPhoenix Children's Hospitalgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $15k · revenue +67%
- AFAMERICANS FOR OXFORD INCone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +17%
- VHVALLEYWISE HEALTH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -61%
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 Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
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.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Green Dog Rescue Inc. 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 46 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 79 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 AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE INSTITUTE FOR ETHNOMEDICINE INC DBA BRAIN CHEMISTRY LABS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF DEERFIELD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds CABLE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds KATIE FLOWERS ENDOWMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Williams College ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Endeavor Health Clinical Operations ↗
- Who funds LAKE OWEN ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Phoenix Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR OXFORD INC ↗
- Who funds HADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds Bethesda Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds VALLEYWISE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE CHIMPS INC ↗
- Who funds The Society of the Four Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds National Louis University ↗
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 · James L Garard Jr Charitable Tr · Johnson Family Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Josephine P & John J Louis Foundation Inc 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Epilepsy Foundation of America — 22% of income from government
- Big Dog Ranch Rescue Inc — 0% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Williams College — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Josephine P & John J Louis Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Josephine P & John J Louis Foundation Inc 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.