· Private foundation
Linden Foundation Gary & Janet Ellis
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 $10k12 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EVERGLADES FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| FACE THE FUTURE FOUNDATION | $2,600 |
| KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERISTY | $2,500 |
| CONCERN WORLDWIDE | $2,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $2,500 |
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO | $2,500 |
| MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN | $2,500 |
| PINE LAKE SAILING SCHOOL INC | $2,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $1,500 |
| RCMA | $1,500 |
| GULFSHORE PLAYHOUSE | $1,500 |
| HARRY CHAPIN FOOD BANK | $1,500 |
| CHENEQUA FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–20, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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.
23 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 11 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2025 · $57k · revenue +226%
GULFSHORE PLAYHOUSE INC8× · 2018–2025 · $21k · revenue +234%
University of Chicago7× · 2017–2025 · $19k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- HSHAYWARD SPORTS CENTER INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +186%
CHICAGO CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $4k · revenue +44%- FWFrancis W Parker Schoolgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue +38%
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 Free School provides pre-kindergarten through 8th grade instruction and support activities. The faculty consists of qualified indiviuals with the appropriate education and experiende to provide students with the education that…
To equip all students in grades six through twelve with the academic skills, intellectual habits and character traits to succeed in the college of their choice, strenghten their communities and change the world.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
Providing and promoting waldorf education from early childhood through the twelfth grade and promoting waldorf education through community outreach.
The operation of a children's museum.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Children's Advocacy Center and the most unlike its peers is The Boxcar Tour Foundation. 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 42 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) — 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 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.
23 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. 23 of the 33 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 THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GULFSHORE PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds HARRY CHAPIN FOOD BANK OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds PARK WEST COOPERATIVE NURSERY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PINE LAKE SAILING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Children's Museum ↗
- Who funds Face the Future Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHENEQUA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PCD KS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAYWARD SPORTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTOPHER HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds THE BOXCAR TOUR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAYWARD COMMUNITY FOOD SHELF INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds CONCERN WORLDWIDE (US) INC ↗
- Who funds HAYWARD LIBRARY FOUNDATION LTD ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN BETHANY 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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Linden Foundation Gary & Janet Ellis 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.
- Gulfshore Playhouse 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.