· Private foundation
Katherine L Olson Charitable 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k37 grants · $118k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $279k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNICEF | $25,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $24,000 |
| Sarah's Circle | $15,000 |
| Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Advancement Offic | $15,000 |
| Kenilworth Union Church | $15,000 |
| Women's Board of Northwestern Mem Hosp | $15,000 |
| WTTW | $15,000 |
| WBEZ Chicago Public Radio | $15,000 |
| Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violen | $15,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $15,000 |
| Teach for America | $10,000 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF KAFIKA HOUSE | $10,000 |
| The Anti-Cruelty Society | $10,000 |
| Williams College | $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 (FY19–24, $116k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 66% 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.
62 repeat relationships — 51 still active in FY2024, 11 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY6× · 2019–2024 · $92k · revenue +78%- SCSARAH'S CIRCLE6× · 2019–2024 · $85k · revenue +133%
Williams College5× · 2020–2024 · $70k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- SISamaritan Interfaith Counseling Centergraduatedone grant, 2019 · $20k · revenue +260%
- MSMILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ENDOWMENTgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $11k · revenue +539%
HYDE PARK ART CENTERone grant, 2022 · $6k · revenue +17%
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 chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
Achieving international impact through world-class research and education in fundamental computer science and information technology.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
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…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is C J Jung Center. 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 47 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 — 0.0% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 72 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 GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds Williams College ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds Scripps College ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE WOMAN'S BOARD OF NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds GIFFORDS LAW CENTER TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds MAIN STAY THERAPEUTIC FARM INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO WALDORF SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF KAFIKA HOUSE F/K/A FRIENDS OF THE PLASTER HOUSE ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds NOBLE NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds The Anti-Cruelty Society ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds C J JUNG CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Samaritan Interfaith Counseling Center ↗
- Who funds BOZEMAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds Safer Foundation ↗
- Who funds African Mission Healthcare Foundation ↗
- Who funds ROGERS PARK MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
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 · Dr Scholl Foundation · Caerus Foundation Inc · Charles H and Beverly E Shaw Foundation · Ceres Foundation · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Baird Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Katherine L Olson Charitable 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.
- 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.