· Private foundation
MEB Charitable Foundation DBA Robbins-Berger Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k27 grants · $88k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $123k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $50,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $33,000 |
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | $15,000 |
| THE THEATRE LAB | $15,000 |
| PAWS CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF ILLINOIS | $10,000 |
| Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina | $10,000 |
| CAMP FOR ALL KIDS | $10,000 |
| LOU AND JEAN MALNATI BRAIN TUMOR INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| Nourishing Hope | $10,000 |
| Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights | $7,000 |
| ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| HIAS | $5,000 |
| Gender Justice | $5,000 |
| Midwest Access Coalition | $5,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $60k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
45 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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 CHICAGO4× · 2021–2024 · $71k · revenue +33%
- TTTHE THEATRE LAB INC4× · 2021–2024 · $40k · revenue +21%
- PPPlanned Parenthood of Illinois4× · 2021–2024 · $31k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- SHSTUDENTS HELPING HONDURAS INC DBA ONE THOUSAND SCHOOLSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +58%
- MHMAUI HUMANE SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +79%
- FOFRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INCone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -45%
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.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
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.
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
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…
The aids foundation of chicago mobilizes communities to create equity and justice for people living with and vulnerable to hiv and related chronic disease.
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is a leader in advancing immigrant rights through its unique strategy drawing on its legal services to promote legal reform through litigation, advocacy and strategic communications.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Immigration Law Center and the most unlike its peers is Camp for All Kids. 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 35 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.
48 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. 48 of the 60 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 GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds THE THEATRE LAB INC ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood of Illinois ↗
- Who funds Camp for All Kids ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds HIGH JUMP ↗
- Who funds ONE FAMILY ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR ABUSED WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GENDER JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST ACCESS COALITION ↗
- Who funds REFUGEEONE ↗
- Who funds Howard Brown Health Center ↗
- Who funds Role Model Movement Inc (NFP) ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) ↗
- Who funds STUDENTS HELPING HONDURAS INC DBA ONE THOUSAND SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds MAUI HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL & EASTERN NC INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds LAUREL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Camp Kesem National ↗
- Who funds The Anti-Cruelty Society ↗
- Who funds TWLOHA INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Baird Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 MEB Charitable Foundation DBA Robbins-Berger 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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.