· Private foundation
Robert G Weiss 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 $10k21 grants · $18k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $128k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERYL SUZANNE WEISS FUND | $128,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $5,900 |
| CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL | $3,000 |
| CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE | $2,000 |
| OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC | $1,250 |
| ANSHE EMET SYNAGOGUE | $1,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $1,000 |
| FRANCISCAN COMMUNITY BENEFITS SERVICES INC | $650 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $500 |
| KHECARI | $500 |
| LYRIC OPERA | $450 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $400 |
| WBEZ | $250 |
| Individual grant recipient | $250 |
| NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER | $250 |
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 (FY22–24, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 65% 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.
40 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 26 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago3× · 2017–2019 · $169k · revenue +33%
- TSTHE SANTA FE OPERA3× · 2017–2019 · $104k · revenue +53%
University of Chicago4× · 2017–2020 · $60k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- COCHABAD OF ISRAEL TORAHone grant, 2023 · $25k
- COCHICAGO OPERA THEATERone grant, 2017 · $6k · revenue -18%
- MOMUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +79%
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 music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
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 Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
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…
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…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grant Park Orchestral Association and the most unlike its peers is Meryl Suzanne Weiss Fund. 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 42 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 79 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 Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MERYL SUZANNE WEISS FUND ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Claremont McKenna College ↗
- Who funds OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ↗
- Who funds Khecari ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds KENYON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Chicago Dancemakers Forum ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GROWING HOME INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Franciscan Community Benefit Services ↗
- Who funds International Council for Small Business George Wash Univ Sch of Business ↗
- Who funds LENSIC PERFORMING ARTS 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: The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Walder Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Arkes Family Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial
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 Weiss 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 Weiss Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert G Weiss 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.