· Private foundation
Mazza Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k8 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $297k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $450k
- $250k+5 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $300,000 |
| MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $300,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| DEPAUL UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO | $200,000 |
| LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO | $125,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $75,000 |
| LUMEN CHRISTI INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL | $40,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $30,000 |
| GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY | $25,000 |
| LITTLE BROTHERS - FRIENDS OF THE ELDERLY | $20,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING JESUIT COLLEGE PREP | $20,000 |
| CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE | $15,000 |
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, $1.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +19% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
56 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 4 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $225k 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
- BSBig Shoulders Fund6× · 2020–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +67%
- DUDEPAUL UNIVERSITY6× · 2020–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +7%
MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION4× · 2022–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +286%
Funded once
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago (Don Giovanni)one grant, 2020 · $150k
- MHMisericordia Heart of Mercyone grant, 2021 · $100k
- AOArchdiocese of Chicago - COVID 19 Relief Fundone grant, 2020 · $100k
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.
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…
Steadfast in jesus christ as revealed in the holy scriptures, concordia university chicago promotes academic rigor in its liberal arts and professional programs; grounds students in objective truth, integrity, and excellence; and practices…
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 psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
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…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired and the most unlike its peers is The Chicago Academy of Sciences. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 52 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 83 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 Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds LUMEN CHRISTI INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR CHICAGO ST MARY'S HOME ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LITTLE BROTHERS - FRIENDS OF THE ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA PRESS ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey St Martin College Prep ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ALLENDALE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HIGHSIGHT ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
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 · Helen V Brach Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · WP & HB White Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Service Club of Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Seabury Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · 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 Mazza 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Mazza Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mazza Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.