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· Private foundation

Cushing Family 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.

$8.1M
Granted FY2025still arriving
56
Grants FY2025still arriving
12
States reached
$3.3M
Largest
01What you fundRead
02The needRead
03Your edgeRead
04Your fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What you fund
01

What you funded, over time

By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 59% of CUSHING FAMILY FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.

02FY2025 · 56 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k2 grants · $10k
  • $10k–50k11 grants · $275k
  • $50k–250k40 grants · $3.3M
  • $250k+3 grants · $4.5M
$50,000
Median grant
12
States reached
$164M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
AMREF HEALTH AFRICA IN THE USA$3,250,000
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY$1,000,000
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA$250,000
GLEN ELLYN FOOD PANTRY$200,000
AMERICAN RED CROSS$150,000
ST FRANCIS HIGH SCHOOL$100,000
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (NPR)$100,000
URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE$100,000
THE CARTER CENTER$100,000
ONE ACRE FUND$100,000
BEAT THE STREETS CHICAGO$100,000
BRIDGE COMMUNITIES INC$100,000
LOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES$100,000
FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN$100,000
EVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS$100,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $659k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 40% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%PROXIMITY 2 HUMANITY: $100k → 13%MISERICORDIA HOME: $100k → 14%DUPAGE SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL (KANE SENIOR COUNCIL): $50k → 7%MISERICORDIA HOME: $25k → 14%MISERICORDIA HOME: $10k → 14%DUPAGE SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL (KANE SENIOR COUNCIL): $5k → 7%MARYVILLE ACADEMY: $25k → 14%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $58k → 7%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $50k → 7%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $25k → 7%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $25k → 7%ALMOST HOME KIDS: $1k → 14%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $15k → 7%HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT: $5k → 7%GLEN ELLYN CHILDREN'S RESOURCE CENT: $60k → 7%GLEN ELLYN CHILDREN'S RESOURCE CENT: $5k → 7%LOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES: $100k → 7%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

MN
IL
NY
MA
IA
PA
CA
VA
MD
TN
NC
DC
GA

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

81%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$9.0M · 37 repeat orgs$2.1M to everyone else

37 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 32 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

37
14

Total granted

$9.0M
$135k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+31%
+52%

Still filing today

78%
64%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.0M went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
Human ServicesHealthInternationalFood & NutritionEnvironmentHousing & ShelterOther

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

  • GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY
    3× · 2022–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +34%
  • TS
    THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA
    5× · 2019–2025 · $607k · revenue +21%
  • TM
    THE MORTON ARBORETUM
    4× · 2022–2025 · $300k · revenue +8%

Funded once

  • B
    BLOODWATER
    one grant, 2022 · $25k
  • HI
    HCUND INC (HOSPITALITY COMMITTEE FOR UNITED NATIONS DELEGATIONS INC)
    one grant, 2022 · $25k
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2022 · $25k

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
University of Chicago Medical Center

Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…

Health
2
National Opinion Research Center

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…

Social Science
3
Uchicago Medicine Network Inc

Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…

Health
4
Nourishing Hope

Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.

—
5
Partners in Food Solutions

Improve the food value chain in developing countries by mobilizing corporate volunteers to share knowledge and expertise with small and growing food processors.

International
6
The Global FoodBanking Network

To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.

International
7
Project Hope - the People-to-People Health Foundation Inc

To conduct and support programs and activities aimed at solving some of the world's greatest public health challenges, with a specific focus on enabling health workers to have the greatest possible impact on the health of the people they…

International
8
Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Inc

Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…

Community Improvement
9
Management Sciences for Health Inc

(msh) saves lives and improves the health of the world's poorest (see schedule o) and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.

International
10
Waterorg

Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.

International
11
Public Health Institute

Public health institute generates and promotes research, leadership and partnerships to build capacity for strong public health policy, programs, systems and practices.

Health
12
Project Drawdown

Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Action Against Hunger - Usa and the most unlike its peers is Chelonian Research Foundation. 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 40 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number20%2%<5yr14%5%5–10yr19%10%10–20yr18%25%20–35yr15%25%35–55yr15%33%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value20%2%<5yr14%3%5–10yr19%6%10–20yr18%24%20–35yr15%38%35–55yr15%28%55yr+

The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.0%0/65
the rest of the field
13%
9,274/69,878

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.

04the grantee network

65 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. 65 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.

1
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
14
Early backer (in before they grew)
64/65
Grantees still filing
44/65
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

AMREF HEALTH AFRICA IN THE USA — $3,648,000 · OtherAMREF HEALTH AFRICA IN THE USASHINE GLOBAL INC — $720,000 · OtherSHINE GLOBAL INCTHEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA — $607,000 · OtherTHEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA+39 more — $2,049,500 · Other+39 moreGREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY — $1,040,000 · Food & NutritionGREATER CHIC…URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE INC — $100,000 · Food & NutritionURBAN GROWER…DIONS CHICAGO DREAM INC NFP — $50,000 · Food & Nutrition+2 more — $40,000 · Food & NutritionAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches — $185,000 · Human ServicesTHE HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT — $178,000 · Human ServicesMISERICORDIA HOME — $135,000 · Human ServicesLOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES — $100,000 · Human ServicesPROXIMITY 2 HUMANITY CORPORATION — $100,000 · Human ServicesGLEN ELLYN CHILDRENS RESOURCE CENTER — $65,000 · Human ServicesDUPAGE SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL — $55,000 · Human Services+3 more — $34,000 · Human ServicesBRIDGE COMMUNITIES INC — $300,000 · Housing & ShelterDUPAGE PADS INC — $200,000 · Housing & ShelterCHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS — $90,000 · Housing & Shelter+1 more — $15,000 · Housing & ShelterFEED MY STARVING CHILDREN INC — $105,000 · InternationalHELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL — $100,000 · InternationalONE ACRE FUND — $100,000 · InternationalTHE CARTER CENTER INC — $100,000 · InternationalSpark Ventures — $25,000 · InternationalAMIGOS OF COSTA RICA INC — $25,000 · InternationalINTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS — $25,000 · International+2 more — $12,300 · InternationalBLOOD CANCER UNITED INC — $105,000 · HealthVISION TO LEARN — $100,000 · HealthErikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression — $50,000 · HealthPLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC — $50,000 · HealthTHE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP — $50,000 · HealthALZHEIMER'S FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC — $30,000 · HealthPROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION OF CHICAGO — $25,000 · HealthMARCH OF DIMES INC — $25,000 · Health+1 more — $5,000 · HealthTHE MORTON ARBORETUM — $300,000 · EnvironmentEVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS — $100,000 · EnvironmentOCEAN CONSERVANCY — $17,000 · Environment+1 more — $2,000 · Environment
Other$7,024,500Food & Nutrition$1,230,000Human Services$852,000Housing & Shelter$605,000International$492,300Health$440,000Environment$419,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetGREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY — $1,040,000 over 3y, 0.4% of budgetSHINE GLOBAL INC — $720,000 over 6y, 50% of budgetTHEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA — $607,000 over 5y, 9.2% of budgetTHE MORTON ARBORETUM — $300,000 over 4y, 0.2% of budgetBRIDGE COMMUNITIES INC — $300,000 over 3y, 2.1% of budgetGLEN ELLYN FOOD PANTRY — $211,000 over 4y, 0.2% of budgetDUPAGE PADS INC — $200,000 over 2y, 0.9% of budgetAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches — $185,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetTHE HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT — $178,000 over 6y, 3.6% of budgetMISERICORDIA HOME — $135,000 over 3y, 0.1% of budgetFEED MY STARVING CHILDREN INC — $105,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetBLOOD CANCER UNITED INC — $105,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetPAWS CHICAGO — $105,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetHELEN KELLER INTERNATIONAL — $100,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetLOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES — $100,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetVISION TO LEARN — $100,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetCOLLEGE OF DUPAGE FOUNDATION — $100,000 over 1y, 2.4% of budgetCHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS — $90,000 over 4y, 0.7% of budgetLyric Opera of Chicago — $80,000 over 4y, 0.0% of budgetLegal Council for Health Justice — $75,000 over 2y, 1.2% of budgetThe Bhutan Foundation — $75,000 over 2y, 0.8% of budgetGLEN ELLYN CHILDRENS RESOURCE CENTER — $65,000 over 2y, 22% of budgetDUPAGE SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL — $55,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetNAMI Chicago — $50,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetErikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression — $50,000 over 1y, 1.9% of budgetPLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC — $50,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetTHE THRESHOLDS — $50,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP — $50,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetHumane World for Animals Inc — $35,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetSafer Foundation — $30,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetALZHEIMER'S FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC — $30,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetSpark Ventures — $25,000 over 1y, 2.3% of budgetCHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC — $25,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetINTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS — $25,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetMaryville Academy — $25,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetCHELONIAN RESEARCH FOUNDATION — $20,000 over 2y, 14% of budgetOCEAN CONSERVANCY — $17,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetFeeding America — $15,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetHOPE FAIR HOUSING CENTER INC — $15,000 over 2y, 0.8% of budgetACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA — $10,300 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetGUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND INC — $8,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetFRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY OF GLEN ELLYN — $7,000 over 3y, 6.3% of budgetBOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO — $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCURE JM FOUNDATION — $5,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS — $3,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetTHE MISSION CONTINUES — $2,500 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS — $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED — $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

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.

The Chicago Community…United Way of Metropo…The Dupage Community …AbbVie FoundationJpmorgan Chase Founda…John D and Catherine …The Blackbaud Giving …Arthur J Gallagher Fo…Gs Donor Advised Phil…American Endowment Fo…Enterprise Holdings F…Vanguard Charitable E…
The Chicago Community TrustIL26.4× affinity15 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Dupage Community Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program

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 Cushing 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.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%4%15%34%60%your share of their income ↑0%19%38%56%75%share of the org’s income from government →median 16%
  • Chelonian Research Foundation — 16% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
19report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–75%
typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Cushing Family Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Cushing Family 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 83 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines