· Private foundation
Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan 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 $10k14 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k38 grants · $768k
- $50k–250k29 grants · $2.1M
- $250k+8 grants · $9.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITYLAB | $5,542,949 |
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $1,200,000 |
| RISE OPPORTUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| ACCELERATE INSTITUTE | $775,000 |
| PATHWAYS FOUNDATION | $469,163 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $450,000 |
| FRIENDS OF NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS INC | $255,000 |
| NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| ALAIN LOCKE CHARTER SCHOOL | $150,000 |
| THE JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | $125,000 |
| SAINTS FAITH HOPE & CHARITY | $125,000 |
| ST CHRISTOPHER CATHOLIC CHURCH | $100,000 |
| LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| LEO CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY HAVEY INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH | $100,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 97% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
147 repeat relationships — 74 still active in FY2024, 73 since wound down; 14 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $413k 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
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago8× · 2017–2024 · $19M · revenue +31%
- BSBig Shoulders Fund6× · 2017–2024 · $5.5M · revenue +67%
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago7× · 2017–2024 · $3.9M · revenue +33%
Funded once
- SRSHIRLEY RYAN ABILITYLAB FKA REHABILITATION INSTITUTE OF CHICAGOone grant, 2017 · $1.0M
- EIEMPOWER ILLINOISone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue -99%
- SHSACRED HEART SCHOOLSone grant, 2018 · $899k
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 public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
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…
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Achieving international impact through world-class research and education in fundamental computer science and information technology.
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…
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.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
163 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. 163 of the 241 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Accelerate Institute ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds RISE OPPORTUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Alain Locke Charter School ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds THE 100 CLUB OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds Pathways Foundation ↗
- Who funds JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CLEARBROOK ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS ↗
- Who funds The Cara Program ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PRENTICE ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN PLANNING COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
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: Dr Scholl Foundation · Lavin Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Canning Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Carol Bernick Family Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Hobsonlucas Family Foundation · Helen V Brach 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 Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- Jupiter Medical Center Inc — 2% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan 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.