· Private foundation
Ruttenberg Arts Foundation
Its FY2022 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- $10k–50k10 grants · $195k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $394k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART INSTITUE OF CHICAGO | $505,486 |
| FAMILY FOCUS | $500,000 |
| CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL | $125,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY | $100,000 |
| FRIEDMAN PLACE | $100,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $69,000 |
| BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART | $25,000 |
| PROJECT EDUCATION PLUS | $25,000 |
| IL HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| YOUTH FOR A BETTER FUTURE | $25,000 |
| COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| RENAISSANCE SOCIETY AT UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $20,000 |
| MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM | $15,000 |
| PUBLIC ART FUND | $10,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY22–22, $500k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +27% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2022, 3 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $904k 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
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO2× · 2020–2022 · $1.4M · revenue +32%
- CFCOUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2022 · $320k · revenue +158%
- EAELMHURST ART MUSEUM2× · 2020–2021 · $67k · revenue +9%
Funded once
- NMNORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $1.0M
HYDE PARK ART CENTERone grant, 2021 · $500k · revenue -62%- IHIL HOLOCAUST MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $161k
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 Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Design Museum of Chicago strives to inspire, educate and innovate through design. As a resource for the Chicago design community and beyond, the museum facilitates an open dialogue about contemporary and historical design through…
The arts club of chicago was formed as a means to encourage, foster, and develop higher standards of arts craftsmanship, and to maintain the city of chicago facility for the housing of galleries and exhibitions open to the public and free…
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
Cultivates new and emerging Chicago artists, and aims to benefit artists by exploring art and learning. Through exhibitions, artist residencies, classes/workshops and community building, we are dedicated to cultivating new voices, ideas,…
The driehaus museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. its permanent collection and temporary…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
The mca is an innovative and compelling center of contemporary art where the public can directly experience the work and ideas of living artists, and understand the historical, social and cultural context of the art of our time. the museum…
Establish public art programs
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hyde Park Art Center and the most unlike its peers is National Jewish Health. 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 48 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 32 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 THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds FAMILY FOCUS LEGACY ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ELMHURST ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Chicago Children's Museum ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PROJECT EDUCATION PLUS ↗
- Who funds Youth for A Better Future ↗
- Who funds THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds CPS LIVES NFP ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ART FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH ↗
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 · The Ruttenbergkagan Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Richard and Mary L Gray Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Ruttenberg Arts 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 Ruttenberg Arts Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ruttenberg Arts 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.