How much does Rothman Charitable Trust give?

Rothman Charitable Trust reported 43 grants totaling $30,608 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 52 organizations a year over FY2020 to FY2024.

What does Rothman Charitable Trust fund?

By grant dollars over FY2020 to FY2025, its largest causes are Science & Tech (60%), Arts & Culture (13%), Education (11%).

Who are Rothman Charitable Trust's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2020 to FY2025: Ort America Inc ($41k), American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc ($3k), 54 Below Inc ($3k).

Does Rothman Charitable Trust fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 17% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Rothman Charitable Trust accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Rothman Charitable Trust?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The Chicago Community Trust, Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, American Endowment Foundation.

Where is Rothman Charitable Trust based?

Rothman Charitable Trust is based in IL.

Rothman Charitable Trust

Rothman Charitable Trust at a glance

· 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.

$31k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$8k

Largest

01What it funds

0198% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Science & Tech$234kArts & Culture$51kEducation$41kReligion$22kHealth$10kHuman Services$9kInternational$6kCivil Rights$6kOther$0

02FY2025 · 43 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$200

Median grant

States reached

$638k

Total assets

Largest grants
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
JEWISH CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES	$1,000
ACLU FOUNDATION	$1,000
MABEL MERCER FOUNDATION	$700
ADL - ANTI DEFAMATION LEAGUE	$500
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY	$500
WTTW	$500
FRACTURED ATLAS VOICES FESTIVAL	$500
GRIN 2B FOUNDATION	$500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

84%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$132k · 55 repeat orgs$25k to everyone else

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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$132k

$19k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+17%

+20%

Still filing today

56%

42%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureHuman ServicesHealthInternationalCivil RightsAnimalsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

OA
ORT AMERICA INC
4× · 2020–2024 · $41k · revenue +31%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC
4× · 2022–2025 · $3k · revenue +27%
JU
JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO
2× · 2022–2023 · $3k · revenue +30%

Funded once

IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2020 · $5k
PT
PORCHLIGHT THEATRE
one grant, 2020 · $3k
AC
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF ILLINOISgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $600 · revenue +114%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University Inc

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…

Arts & Culture

American Museum of Natural History

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."

Arts & Culture

Museum of Jewish Heritage a Living Memorial to the Holocaust

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.

Arts & Culture

Chicago Theatre Group Inc

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…

Arts & Culture

Columbia College Chicago

The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.

Education

The Adler Planetarium

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…

Arts & Culture

United States Naval Institute

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.

—

Music and Dance Theater Chicago Inc

Arts & Culture

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Minneapolis Jewish Federation

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.

Philanthropy

New York Botanical Garden

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…

Environment

Lyric Opera of Chicago

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…

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society; 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.

04the grantee network

61 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

61/61

Grantees still filing

43/61

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

International$233,150Other$129,757Arts & Culture$7,493Civil Rights$5,350Health$4,765Human Services$3,200Philanthropy$2,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

The Chicago Community TrustIL13.8× affinity6 shared granteesties to 9 of 9Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Rothman Charitable Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Rothman Charitable Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

12report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

1rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Rothman’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home