· Private foundation
Morrison-Shearer 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| 3ARTS INC | $15,000 |
| THE RAGDALE FOUNDATION | $11,030 |
| CHICAGO DANCEMAKERS FORUM | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% of your 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 +63% since the first grant, against -30% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 1 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- RFRagdale Foundation5× · 2017–2024 · $50k · revenue +117%
- CDCHICAGO DANCE HISTORY PROJECT5× · 2017–2023 · $25k · revenue +71%
- CDChicago Dancemakers Forum3× · 2017–2024 · $20k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- KKhecarione grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -30%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $1k
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.
To build a foundation for the individual artistic growth of dancers and choreographers, providing a laboratory from which early career artists propel themselves and the art form to a new level through training, collaboration, mentorship,…
To enrich the lives of our community through dance education and performance while developing Chicago's native talent pool in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism & ethnic diversity.
To use multiple artistic forms (primarily dance and music) and the combined talents of our diverse company to convey intense personal narratives. We are proudly and visibly multicultural, exploring the intersection of heritage, culture,…
Reimagines and diversifies the aesthetics of contemporary dance by uniting modern, American, and African-American traditions in dance and storytelling.
Visceral Dance Chicago is a contemporary company dedicated to providing a comprehensive environment designed to cultivate dance education, creation and performance for choreographers, dancers, and artists.
Preserves and perpetuates bharata natyam, one of the great classical dance forms of india, in all its classical rigor, and moves the art form in innovative directions to foster cultural exchange through dance.
To develop educational programs, choreograph, perform, and produce dance that promotes an appreciation of, and participation in, aerial dance as a creative, physical and cultural art form.
Ballet Chicago is a professional track school of ballet that creates exceptional dancers. It makes classical ballet training accessible to all. Its founders Daniel Duell and Patricia Blair carry on George Balanchines legacy by providing…
The Organization creates movement-based works that expore the complexity of human experience. Using subtle gesture, explosive movement, humor, and interactive design, the organization develops projects at the crossroads of movement, visual…
Threewalls is dedicated to fostering contemporary art practices that respond to lived experiences, encouraging connections beyond art through performance, live exhibits, publications, all while connected segregated communities throughout…
Engages communities in their art and creative process through innovative modern dance performance and educational programs.
The mission of emergence dance is to expand access to dance for artists and audiences by performing, rehearsing, teaching, advising, presenting, curating and marketing dance.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Dancemakers Forum and the most unlike its peers is Khecari. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
7 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. 7 of the 9 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.
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 · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Morrison-Shearer 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.