· Private foundation
Oettinger 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lyric Opera of Chicago | $5,982 |
| Writers Theatre | $5,000 |
| American Opera Society of Chicago | $55 |
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 (FY22–22, $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 +118% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 1 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, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago3× · 2020–2024 · $7k · revenue +34%
- MTMusic Theatre Works Inc2× · 2020–2022 · $3k · revenue +220%
- AOAMERICAN OPERA SOCIETY OF CHICAGO3× · 2021–2024 · $535 · revenue +118%
Funded once
- GPGRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +172%
- CYChicago Youth Centersgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $1k · revenue +57%
- TCTHE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTSone grant, 2020 · $1k · revenue +21%
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.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Support and promotion of arts education programs at chicago high school for the arts. the organization may also support other educational activities in furtherance of the arts.
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
The Chicago Cultural Alliances mission is to connect, promote, and support centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive Chicago. We are an active consortium of 50 cultural heritage museums, centers, and historical societies that…
Cinema/Chicago, the non-profit 501(c)(3) presenting organization of the Chicago International Film Festival, enriches the community through year-round programming devoted to international and independent cinema. We strengthen communication…
Cedille Chicago, NFP is devoted to the activity of producing and marketing recordings of classical music by Chicago-area musicians and composers.
To create vivid, entertaining theatrical experiences that invigorate and engage people of all ages and identities by illuminating the complexity, ambiguity, and wonder of our world. shared humanity and unforgettable stories - now this is…
To cultivate a growing international culture of listening.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grant Park Orchestral Association and the most unlike its peers is Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 16 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 GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds Music Theatre Works Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago Youth Centers ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN OPERA SOCIETY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds SKOKIE NORTHSHORE SCULPTURE PARK INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds SHALVA 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 · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Oettinger 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.