· Private foundation
Mary Lou Downs 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k30 grants · $140k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $14,000 |
| LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR OF PALATINE | $14,000 |
| WINGS PROGRAM INC | $14,000 |
| LARABIDA CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $14,000 |
| SHRINER'S HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN | $14,000 |
| TUNNELS TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $14,000 |
| MISERICORDIA HEART OF MERCY | $14,000 |
| HEPHZIBAH CHILDREN'S ASSN | $14,000 |
| THE CENTER OF CONCERN | $13,000 |
| SHELTER INC | $13,000 |
| ANN & ROBERT LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $12,000 |
| HOUSE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD | $10,000 |
| LIFE SPAN | $8,000 |
| PARALYZED VETERANS OF AMERICA | $7,000 |
| MARYVILLE ACADEMY | $7,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $236k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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.
46 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $69k · revenue +78%- WPWINGS PROGRAM INC6× · 2020–2025 · $69k · revenue +122%
- LLIFE-SPAN6× · 2020–2025 · $63k · revenue +46%
Funded once
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.
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
See schedule oadvancing physical and emotional safety by reducing the impact and occurrence of sexual and domestic violence, human trafficking and stalking through inclusive intervention and prevention services for children, youth, and…
Infant welfare society of chicago (iws) (d/b/a iws family health) provides quality medical, dental and behavioral health services for the health, physical and mental development of children and their families in the chicagoland community.
Child Link provides foster care, family counseling, and therapy services to Chicago area adolescents who are at risk of homelessness. Child Link also refers adolescents to other agencies that are able to provide additional resources and…
The little sisters of the poor operate st. mary's home, which provides nursing and residential care for the needy elderly. the home is part of the international congregation of the little sisters of the poor, which was founded in france in…
To create a better world by serving people in need by operating food pantries, homeless shelters, a domestic violence shelter, affordable housing communities, senior living, assisted living and skilled care facilities, a home health care…
Heartland alliance health's mission is to transform healthcare for the most vulnerable, particularly people experiencing homelessness, mental illness or addictions, or struggling with multiple chronic illnesses, improving health for all…
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
Believing in the value of every life, mary's path empowers vulnerable teen mothers in foster care and their babies to create lives of dignity, hope and self-sufficiency.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
Care to terminal patients/families
MISSION - ST. JUDE HOUSE, Inc. (St. Jude House) IS a family violence prevention center and shelter; our mission is TO CELEBRATE LIFE AND SERVE WITH JOY. Vision - St. Jude House is a catalyst in Northwest Indiana for the prevention,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Shelter Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Heart Association Inc. 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 48 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 46 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 ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds WINGS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds LIFE-SPAN ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER OF CONCERN ↗
- Who funds SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEPHZIBAH CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds La Rabida Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds House of the Good Shepherd ↗
- Who funds Maryville Academy ↗
- Who funds PARALYZED VETERANS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust ↗
- Who funds The Anti-Cruelty Society ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds WEST SUBURBAN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds Turning Point Inc ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD'S VOICE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds PADS TO HOPE DBA-JOURNEYS THE ROAD HOME ↗
- Who funds PADS Lake County Inc ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY TO LEARNING ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR ABUSED WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCAN OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds ARDEN SHORE CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES ↗
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: United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · AbbVie Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · Helen V Brach Foundation · The Allstate Foundation · Cuore e Mani Foundation · Blowitz-Ridgeway Foundation · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust · Trustmark Foundation · Robert R McCormick 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 Lou Downs 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.