· Private foundation
Nathaniel and Lillian G Sommerfield Memorial Fund - Co Sally N Schwartz
Its FY2019 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 48% of NATHANIEL AND LILLIAN G SOMMERFIELD MEMORIAL FUND - CO SALLY N SCHWARTZ’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.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO COSTUME COUNCIL CHGO HIST M | $3,600 |
| PROJECT ONWARD | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| CHICAGO HOUSE | $1,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOUSE OF MISS TAMMIE MON | $250 |
| FRIENDS OF CHICAGO RIVER | $200 |
| OPEN BOOKS | $200 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $200 |
| MARGARET'S VILLAGE | $100 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100 |
| LYNN SAGE CANCER RESEARCH | $100 |
| ST JUDE'S | $100 |
| SISKEL FILM CENTER | $100 |
| ACLU | $100 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100 |
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 (FY19–19, $100) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +58% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2019, 7 since wound down; 37 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 2% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- IIIllinois Institute of Technology2× · 2017–2018 · $6k · revenue +27%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra2× · 2017–2018 · $2k · revenue +58%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO2× · 2017–2018 · $2k · revenue +45%
Funded once
- NMNORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HOSPITALone grant, 2018 · $3k
- CGCHICAGO GATEWAY GREEN COMMITTEEone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue -49%
- CMClassical Music Chicagoone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue -25%
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.
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…
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Chicago public art group brings artists and communities together to produce high-quality public art, extending and transforming the tradition of collaborative, community-involved public artwork.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
Chicago childrens museum is a place where families and caregivers with infants and children are encouraged to create, explore, and discover together through play. the museum features three vibrant floors of exhibits and activities that…
Cedille Chicago, NFP is devoted to the activity of producing and marketing recordings of classical music by Chicago-area musicians and composers.
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Chicago House & Social Service Agency. 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 field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 64 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 Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ONWARD ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO GATEWAY GREEN COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds Classical Music Chicago ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HOUSE & SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCY ↗
- Who funds THE LILY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Center for Environmental Health ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds Pitch In ↗
- Who funds LITTLE CITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PAWS INC ↗
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 · AbbVie Foundation · The Allstate Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation 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 Nathaniel and Lillian G Sommerfield Memorial Fund - Co Sally N Schwartz 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.