· Private foundation
Robert & Isabelle Bass Fdn Inc
Its FY2025 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $195k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL | $20,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $20,000 |
| CHICAGO OPERA THEATER | $20,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $12,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,500 |
| JOFFREY BALLET | $10,000 |
| NOIS PERFORMING ARTS ORGANIZATION | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| HARRIS THEATER FOR MUSIC AND DANCE | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| D-COMPOSED | $9,500 |
| CLASSICAL MUSIC CHICAGO | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of your 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 +15% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 1 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- FMFIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY7× · 2019–2025 · $175k · revenue +28%
- GPGRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION7× · 2019–2025 · $110k · revenue +95%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra7× · 2019–2025 · $98k · revenue +75%
Funded once
- GIGilloury Instituteone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -8%
- PLPLAYMAKERS LABORATORY THEATREone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -34%
- VGVictory Gardens Theaterone grant, 2019 · $8k · revenue -85%
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.
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…
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.
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…
The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We will do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice.(Continued on Schedule O)
Constellation is a performing arts presenter with an emphasis on forward- thinking practices, particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
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…
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…
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 Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Humanities Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is Reading Between the Lines Nfp. 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 35 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.
21 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. 21 of the 27 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 FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Storycatchers ↗
- Who funds Healthy Schools Campaign ↗
- Who funds HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INC OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds READING BETWEEN THE LINES NFP ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Classical Music Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS HUMANITIES COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Gilloury Institute ↗
- Who funds PLAYMAKERS LABORATORY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds NOIS PERFORMING ARTS ORGANIZATION NFP ↗
- Who funds Victory Gardens Theater ↗
- Who funds HOLTER MUSEUM OF ART ↗
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 · The Chicago Community Trust · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Richard and Mary L Gray Foundation · The Poetry Foundation · John R Halligan Charitable Fund · Illinois Humanities Council Inc · The Irving Harris Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago
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 & Isabelle Bass Fdn Inc 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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Find your warmest path to Robert & Isabelle Bass Fdn Inc 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.