· Private foundation
Rauner Family 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 $10k2 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $110k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $900k
- $250k+3 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $1,000,000 |
| START EARLY | $1,000,000 |
| EVERGLADES FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| ROGER BALDWIN FTDN REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS | $150,000 |
| PARK CITY ENIORNMENTAL COUNCIL | $125,000 |
| MIAMI WATERKEEPER | $125,000 |
| 4 RANGES COMMUNITY RECREATION FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| CLIMATE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING INTIATIVE - CSEI UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION | $100,000 |
| JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS | $50,000 |
| DARTMOUTH COLLEGE - 1978 FOOTBALL PLAYERS INTERNSHIP FUND FOR THE TEEVENS C | $50,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY - MT | $50,000 |
| PLAN A HEALTH | $25,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $25,000 |
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 (FY17–20, $85k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +53% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 8 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $578k 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
START EARLY7× · 2018–2024 · $6.4M · revenue +106%- ASA SAFE HAVEN FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $2.6M · revenue +53%
THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +115%
Funded once
- NNARALone grant, 2018 · $500k
THE BAIL PROJECT INCone grant, 2019 · $500k · revenue -57%- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $250k
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The mission of the alliance for sustainable energy llc (alliance) is to operate the u.s. department of energy's national renewable energy laboratory to advance the science and engineering of energy efficiency, sustainable transportation,…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
Bens applies industry experience and best business practices to help address our nation's pressing national security challenges.
To research and develop centrist policy ideas.
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…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
Shape and drive bold policy solutions to achieve equitable carbon-neutral economies.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Independent Sector and the most unlike its peers is The Illinois Motorcycle Freedom Run. 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 28 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 59 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 START EARLY ↗
- Who funds A SAFE HAVEN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds GREEK AMERICAN REHABILITATION AND CARE CENTRE ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Dartmouth College ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS STATE POLICE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds BISCAYNE BAY WATERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds THE RED SOX FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds National Louis University ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds 4 RANGES COMMUNITY RECREATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds VANDALIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF RANDOLPH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO BAPTIST INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PARK COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Rauner Family 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.
- Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper Inc — 19% of income from government
- The Red Sox Foundation 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 Rauner Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Rauner Family 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.