· Private foundation
Metzner Family 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k55 grants · $145k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $207k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE ARK | $30,100 |
| ART INSTITUTE MUSEUM | $25,500 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $25,000 |
| DRIEHAUS MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF CHICAGO | $15,000 |
| COLUMBIA COLLEGE | $14,629 |
| Individual grant recipient | $11,000 |
| AIDS FOUNDATION | $10,560 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $10,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| CHIARTS | $10,000 |
| MONASTRY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| ARTS CLUB OF CHICAGO | $7,500 |
| NORTH SHORE CONGREGATION ISRAEL - NSCI | $6,370 |
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 (FY17–23, $20k) 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +38% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 46 since wound down; 12 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $28k 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
- MOMUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART7× · 2017–2024 · $147k · revenue +0%
- TRThe Richard H Driehaus Museum6× · 2018–2024 · $88k · revenue +167%
- WTWriters Theatre Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $60k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- DADOCUMENTARY ASSOCIATION (INTERNATIONAL)one grant, 2021 · $10k
- UWUNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INCone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue -50%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -40%
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 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 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 adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
Lookingglass theatre company is a national leader in the creation and presentation of innovative, cutting-edge theatrical work. lookingglass interweaves movement, circus arts and narrative in original and captivating ways. guided by an…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
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…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Arts Alliance and the most unlike its peers is The Monastery 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 41 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 11% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
94 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. 94 of the 183 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 MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The Richard H Driehaus Museum ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds Arizona Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Chicago Artists Coalition ↗
- Who funds Threewalls ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds Columbia College Chicago ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Society for Contemporary Art C-O The Art Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds TWIST OUT CANCER ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds The National Public Housing Museum ↗
- Who funds Indiana University 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: The Chicago Community Trust · Field Foundation of Illinois · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Terra Foundation for American Art · Builders Vision Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Jack & Sandra Guthman Fdn · The Atkins Family 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 Metzner 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 1% 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.