· Private foundation
Julian 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $153k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $645k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $935,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $500,000 |
| WTTWWFMT - WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC | $160,000 |
| LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS (LAO) | $150,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $140,000 |
| MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $75,000 |
| CEDILLE CHICAGO - RECORDING FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS EMPOWERING ARTISTS EVERYWHERE | $50,000 |
| ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE | $40,000 |
| THIRD COAST PERCUSSION | $25,000 |
| GRANT PARK SYMPHONY & MUSIC FESTIVAL | $17,500 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $15,000 |
| COLLABORATIVE ARTS INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO (CAIC) | $15,000 |
| MORTON ARBORETUM | $10,000 |
| SOLTI 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 (FY21–25, $42k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
65 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2025, 32 since wound down; 1 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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 · $9.0M · revenue +58%
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC9× · 2017–2025 · $1.9M · revenue +113%
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago9× · 2017–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +33%
Funded once
- RMRole Model Movement Incone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue -78%
- IGI Grow Chicago NFPone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue 0%
- WTWINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC (WWCIWTTWWFMT)one grant, 2019 · $26k
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.
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
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.
To excite, engage, and transform diverse audiences with the beauty and power of music.
To present high quality arts programming and musical performances that will educate, enrich and improve the quality of life for the diverse Chicago cultural communities and beyond.
Music of the baroque is a professional orchestra and chorus excelling in the performance of works from the 18th century and before. the organization also educates 2,900 chicago public school students each year through its 'strong voices'…
Camerata chicago is a world class chamber orchestra serving chicago and its surrounding communities with performances of great music featuring musicians of global distinction, camerata chicago is committed to providing an incomparable…
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…
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Music Institute of Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Company of Folk. 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 52 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 87 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 MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CEDILLE CHICAGO NFP ↗
- Who funds THIRD COAST PERCUSSION NFP ↗
- Who funds ELMHURST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ARTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds THE SOLTI FOUNDATION US CO Fiona Queen ↗
- Who funds DAL NIENTE NEW MUSIC NFP ↗
- Who funds Role Model Movement Inc (NFP) ↗
- Who funds KING-BRUWAERT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Classical Music Chicago ↗
- Who funds I Grow Chicago NFP ↗
- Who funds ARTSMART ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ↗
- Who funds Wellness House ↗
- Who funds The People's Music School ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds KARTEMQUIN EDUCATIONAL FILMS ↗
- Who funds Chicago Architecture 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 Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Zell Family Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Elizabeth F Cheney Foundation · The Negaunee Foundation · Prince Foundation · The Irving Harris Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Louise K Smith Foundation · John R Halligan Charitable Fund
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 Julian 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.