· Private foundation
Rothman Charitable Trust
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 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PORCHLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE | $7,500 |
| BETH HILLEL BNAI EMUNAH | $4,850 |
| 54 BELOW FOUNDATION | $2,600 |
| H FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| AMERICAN MUSIC THEATRE ARCHIVES | $1,250 |
| WBEZ | $1,200 |
| SARAH SIDDONS SOCIETY | $1,150 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| JEWISH CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES | $1,000 |
| MABEL MERCER FOUNDATION | $700 |
| WTTW | $500 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $500 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS VOICES FESTIVAL | $500 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $500 |
| ADL - ANTI DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $500 |
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 (FY20–25, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
55 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 7 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- OAORT AMERICA INC4× · 2020–2024 · $41k · revenue +16%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2022–2025 · $3k · revenue +27%- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO2× · 2022–2023 · $3k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $5k
- PTPORCHLIGHT THEATREone grant, 2020 · $3k
- ACAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF ILLINOISgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $600 · revenue +114%
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 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…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The museum of jewish heritage - a living memorial to the holocaust is new york's contribution to the global responsibility to never forget. see schedule o for additional information.
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Sarah Siddons Society Inc. 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 47 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% 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.
61 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. 61 of the 122 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 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TECHNION ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds 54 BELOW INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds THE H FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sarah Siddons Society Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MABEL MERCER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GRIN2B FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds Jewish Child and Family Services ↗
- Who funds REFUGEEONE ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds BROADWAY CARESEQUITY FIGHTS AIDS INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds CONGRESSIONAL COALITION ON ADOPTION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Cradle Society ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF ILLINOIS ↗
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 · American Endowment Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Rothman Charitable Trust 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% 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.