· Private foundation
Mary Apple Boyer Family Foundation
Its FY2021 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 FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k21 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $12k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WINNETKA CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH | $11,550 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL | $9,600 |
| CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL | $5,500 |
| CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL | $3,000 |
| WRITERS THEATRE | $2,500 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANICAL GARDEN | $1,500 |
| JOURNEY CARE FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| THE BOULEVARD (INTERFAITH HOUSE) | $1,000 |
| CHICAGO CHILDRENS MUSEUM | $1,000 |
| SARASOTA OPERA | $500 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $500 |
| SKOKIE COUNTRY CLUB EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $500 |
| NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER | $500 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $500 |
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 (FY17–21, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 79% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +37% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2021, 7 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- WTWriters Theatre Inc5× · 2017–2021 · $24k · revenue +8%
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY5× · 2017–2021 · $19k · revenue +37%
- CCChicago Children's Museum5× · 2017–2021 · $15k · revenue +14%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DIVINITY SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $2k
- RFRAVINIA FESTIVAL WOMENS BOARDone grant, 2020 · $2k
- TLTHE LINCOLN ACADEMY OF ILLINOISone grant, 2017 · $600 · revenue +1%
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.
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…
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 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…
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
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 music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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…
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…
Cedille Chicago, NFP is devoted to the activity of producing and marketing recordings of classical music by Chicago-area musicians and composers.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Court Theatre Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 32 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 Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Children's Museum ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Sarasota Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAWNDALE COLLEGE PREPARATORY CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds The Hap Foundation Inc (F/K/A Journeycare Foundation) ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds THE LINCOLN ACADEMY OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds The Metropolitan Opera Guild Inc ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS 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 · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Mary Apple Boyer 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.