· Private foundation
Lesnik Charitable 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 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 $10k7 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $107k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $41,667 |
| THE FIRST TEE OF CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $20,000 |
| AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION DIVISION OF INDEPENDENT PRACTICE | $20,000 |
| JUPITER MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $5,000 |
| CHAMINADE UNIVERSITY OF HONOLULU | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO POLICE FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| CROHNS & COLITIS FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| OLD ELM SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $2,000 |
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, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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 +25% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 3 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO9× · 2017–2025 · $155k · revenue +13%
- CUCHAMINADE UNIVERSITY OF HONOLULU9× · 2017–2025 · $105k · revenue +43%
University of Chicago3× · 2021–2023 · $100k · revenue +34%
Funded once
NORTON MUSEUM OF ART INCone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue -43%- ESEvans Scholarship Fundone grant, 2017 · $15k
- PAPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
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…
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…
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.
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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.
Manhattan university is an independent catholic instituion of higher learning that embraces qualified men and women of all faiths, cultures, and traditions. the mission of manhattan university is to provide a contemporary, person-centered…
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…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. 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 44 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.
37 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. 37 of the 52 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 JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHAMINADE UNIVERSITY OF HONOLULU ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE FIRST TEE OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds OLD ELM SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTON MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN OVERSEAS MEMORIAL DAY ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Inc ↗
- Who funds SMART LOVE PARENTING CENTER ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CROHN'S & COLITIS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER D/B/A ADOPTION CENTER OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds The Hap Foundation Inc (F/K/A Journeycare Foundation) ↗
- Who funds BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO POLICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN APPLE FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Lesnik 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.
- Jupiter Medical Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Pan-Massachusetts Challenge Inc — 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.