· Private foundation
Ralla Klepak Performing Arts Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k1 grant · $40k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $739k
- $250k+8 grants · $4.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Merit School of Music | $1,050,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $550,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $536,000 |
| The Ark | $500,000 |
| The Chicago Center for Music Educat | $500,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $450,000 |
| Agudath Israel of Chicago | $250,000 |
| Arie Crown Hebrew Day School | $250,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $225,000 |
| The People's Music School | $150,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $138,600 |
| Harold and Rosemarie Marx Memorial | $100,000 |
| Playthinks | $75,000 |
| Joy Christian Fellowship Church | $50,000 |
| Mesameach | $40,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +28% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $825k 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
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC6× · 2020–2025 · $2.0M · revenue ×16
- NTNORTHLIGHT THEATRE INC4× · 2020–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +128%
- STSTEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY2× · 2020–2021 · $750k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- SHSarah Hartman Instituteone grant, 2024 · $500k
- ICIDA Crown Academyone grant, 2023 · $165k
- SCSOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY CENTERone grant, 2023 · $150k
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 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.
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.
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.
To present high quality arts programming and musical performances that will educate, enrich and improve the quality of life for the diverse Chicago cultural communities and beyond.
Lookingglass theatre company is a national leader in the creation and presentation of innovative, cutting-edge theatrical work. lookingglass interweaves movement, circus arts and narrative in original and captivating ways. guided by an…
Porchlight, Chicagos home for music theatre, illuminates the past, present and future of this American art form through live performance, youth education and outreach programs that positively impact and connect us to the community.
CYT is dedicated to developing character in children and adults through training in the arts and by producing whole family entertainment, all of which reflect Judeo-Christian values.
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…
Writers Theatre (WT) is a literary organization that operates not-for-profit theatres in Glencoe, Illinois. The Writers Theatre mission is to create intimate connections through astonishing performances and innovative programs; activating…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Children's Theatre and the most unlike its peers is Firehouse Community Arts Center of Chicago. 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 39 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
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 65 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 MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds NORTHLIGHT THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds TIMELESS GIFTS ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds Tapestry 360 Health ↗
- Who funds CHANGING WORLDS ↗
- Who funds KUUMBA LYNX ↗
- Who funds Search Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG CHICAGO AUTHORS ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds MESIVTA SHAAREI ADIRIM ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds LUBAVITCH GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
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: Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Field Foundation of Illinois · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Illinois Humanities Council Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Prince Foundation · League of Chicago Theatres 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 Ralla Klepak Performing Arts 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.