· Private foundation
Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation
Its FY2021 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
70% of Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation’s FY2021 grant dollars went to Telluride Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2021 names 13 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2018, the last year Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $264k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 45% of Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist 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.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2018
- $10k–50k6 grants · $101k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $163k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| American Ireland Fund | $63,000 |
| Chicago Public Media | $50,000 |
| A Better Chicago | $50,000 |
| Center on Halsted | $31,000 |
| The Montessori Network | $30,000 |
| Border Network for Human Rights | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Chicago Community Foundation | $10,000 |
| Coalition Immigrant Justice | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–21, $293k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 95% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 56% of Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
15 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2018, 9 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (too recent to call). Read against FY2018, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2021, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- ABA Better Chicago4× · 2017–2021 · $215k · revenue +76%
- TMTHE MONTESSORI NETWORK5× · 2017–2021 · $170k · revenue +88%
- CPCHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC4× · 2018–2021 · $120k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- BNBroader Network for Humansone grant, 2017 · $10k
- SOSOUTHWEST ORGANIZING PROJECTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +224%
- AAAlianza Americasgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +130%
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.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
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.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Latino Union works to defend the rights and dignity of contingent workers, including the right to immigrate, work, live free of oppression and violence, and provide for oneself and one's family.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
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…
Strive to improve the health and well being of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and other medically vulnerable populations by providing quality accessable, affordable, and culturally responsive health care within the community we serve.
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
Secure racial equity and economic opportunity for all
The Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
A grass roots civil rights activisim, community outreach and political empowerment to the community members.
The Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Public Media Inc and the most unlike its peers is Angel Baskets Inc. 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 30 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 31 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 THE AMERICAN IRELAND FUND (DBA THE IRELAND FUNDS AMERICA/THE IRELAND FUNDS) ↗
- Who funds TELLURIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE MONTESSORI NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds CABRINI GREEN LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds Just For Kids Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds TRI-COUNTY HEALTH NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Role Model Movement Inc (NFP) ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds THE TELLURIDE MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Angel Baskets Inc ↗
- Who funds Border Network for Human Rights ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST ORGANIZING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COMMUNITY BOND FUND ↗
- Who funds Alianza Americas ↗
- Who funds AH HAA SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds CENTRO ROMERO ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Telluride Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Rowan Foundation · The Dalton Family Foundation · Clarence J Venne Foundation · Woods Fund of Chicago · The Thomas Phillips and Jane Moore Johnson Foundation · The Irving Harris Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros 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 Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist 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.
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How do I get to Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist 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.