· Private foundation
Robert G Shaw 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 $10k27 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $6,700 |
| BELOIT COLLEGE | $6,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| CITADEL THEATRE | $750 |
| GPF FOUNDATION | $600 |
| BEN'S LIGHTHOUSE | $500 |
| LAKE FOREST-LAKE BLUFF HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $450 |
| CHICAGO BOTANICAL GARDEN | $361 |
| FARAJA FUND FOUNDATION | $250 |
| NORTH SHORE COMMUNITY PARTNERS | $250 |
| READING POWER | $250 |
| LAKE COUNTY SPONSORS | $250 |
| LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION | $225 |
| WBEZ | $200 |
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, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 1% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
46 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 4 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $565 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
BELOIT COLLEGE7× · 2017–2024 · $97k · revenue +6%- CMCarnegie Mellon University8× · 2017–2024 · $43k · revenue +15%
- HCHistory Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff8× · 2017–2024 · $19k · revenue +16%
Funded once
- FPFOREST PARK CONSERVANCY FKA FOREST PARK PRESERVATION CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +49%
- MPMcCINLOCK POST 264 FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $1k
- SPSAGE PATIENT ADVOCATESone grant, 2020 · $500 · 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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
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.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science and…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Sfn's mission is to: 1. advance the understanding of the brain and the nervous system by bringing together scientists of all segments of neuroscience, by facilitating the integration of research directed at all levels of biological…
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 university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Faraja Fund Foundation. 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 31 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 73 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 BELOIT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Mellon University ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN LEGAL CLINICS OF PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds ELAWA FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BENS LIGHTHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FOREST PARK CONSERVANCY FKA FOREST PARK PRESERVATION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GPF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FARAJA FUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CITADEL THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds READING POWER INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds ART IMPACT PROJECT NOT FOR PROFIT ↗
- Who funds AVIELLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY SPONSORS ↗
- Who funds BOUNCE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds North Chicago Community Partners ↗
- Who funds CAREER RESOURCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE FLORIDA 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: The Chicago Community Trust · Clarks Fork Foundation · The Grainger Foundation Inc · Butler Family Foundation · Anne Hunting Foundation · Little Orchard Foundation · Schultz Family Private Foundation · Harold M & Adeline S Morrison Family Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · AbbVie Foundation · Hunter Family Foundation · Hunting 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 Robert G Shaw 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.
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 Robert G Shaw Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert G Shaw 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.