· Private foundation
JS Charitable Trust
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k33 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $80k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| National Geographic Society | $79,500 |
| Chicago Symphony Orchestra | $20,000 |
| Mayo Foundation | $10,000 |
| Santa Fe Opera | $5,000 |
| Alliance Francais de Chicago | $5,000 |
| Solti Foundation | $5,000 |
| The Field Museum | $3,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| COFAM | $2,250 |
| Lyric Opera of Chicago | $2,000 |
| Grafenegg International Council | $2,000 |
| Eisenhower Foundation | $2,000 |
| Lincoln Park Zoo | $2,000 |
| Classical Music Chicago | $1,500 |
| Gorton Community Center | $1,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% 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.
42 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 7 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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 Orchestra9× · 2017–2025 · $165k · revenue +58%
- NGNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $94k · revenue +11%
- TSTHE SANTA FE OPERA9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- YFYERKES FUTURE FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -8%
- FAFitzjohn Adamson Wildlife Trustone grant, 2022 · $5k
- GPGREAT PLAINS CONSERVATION FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +309%
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 Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
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 Frick Collection (the "Collection") operates an internationally recognized art museum and library program for the inspiration and enjoyment of the public and for the advancement of the study of fine arts and kindred subjects.
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
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…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
The driehaus museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. its permanent collection and temporary…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Museum of Contemporary Art and the most unlike its peers is National Geographic Society. 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 51 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 60 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 Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE SOLTI FOUNDATION US CO Fiona Queen ↗
- Who funds Classical Music Chicago ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds YERKES FUTURE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds 626 LANDMARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPIC VENTURES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Gorton Community Center ↗
- Who funds MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE ↗
- Who funds GRAFENEGG INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds CHAPEL & YORK US FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Storycatchers ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds The Eisenhower Foundation ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM AT STOCKBRIDGE 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 · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Richard and Mary L Gray Foundation · The Irving Harris Foundation · The Negaunee Foundation · Zell Family Foundation · John H Hart Foundation · Prince Foundation · Alphawood 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 JS Charitable Trust 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.
- Florence Griswold Museum Inc — 2% of income from government
- Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge Inc — 1% 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 JS Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to JS Charitable Trust 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.