· Private foundation
Sam & Mary Palumbo Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k24 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $287k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $84k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INFANT WELFARE SOCIETY OF CHICAGO | $84,150 |
| ELMHURST UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING JESUIT COLLEGE PREP | $25,000 |
| SAN MIGUEL SCHOOL CHICAGO | $15,000 |
| GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| RAY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION | $12,000 |
| ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| ADULT AND TEEN CHALLENGE ILLINOIS | $10,000 |
| EDGEWOOD COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| BOSTON COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| THE COMMUNITY HOUSE | $10,000 |
| WHEATON COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $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 (FY17–24, $115k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 17% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
42 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 19 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, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $196k 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
- EUELMHURST UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $181k · revenue +43%
Northwestern University6× · 2019–2024 · $75k · revenue +34%- MUMarquette University5× · 2017–2024 · $65k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- ECElmhurst College - ELSAone grant, 2023 · $30k
- UOUniversity of IL at UrbanaChampaignone grant, 2023 · $20k
- EWEastern Washington Universityone grant, 2023 · $15k
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 university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
Xavier is a jesuit catholic university rooted in the liberal arts tradition. our mission is to educate each student intellectually, morally, and spiritually. we create learning opportunities through rigorous academic and professional…
Benedictine University is an inclusive academic community dedicated to teaching and learning, scholarship and service, truth and justice, as inspired by the Catholic intellectual tradition, the social teaching of the Church, and the…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Capital university transforms lives by empowering an inclusive community of learners through engaging academic, co-curricular, and professional experiences.
Roosevelt university is an independent, non-profit, metropolitan university and national leader in educating socially conscious citizens for active and dedicated lives as leaders in their professions and their communities. the university's…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Wesleyan University and the most unlike its peers is Elim Outreach Training Center 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 63 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 — 0.0% 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.
67 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 67 of the 124 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 ELMHURST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds INFANT WELFARE SOCIETY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINTE AUTISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds RAY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BRADLEY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds Wheaton College ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DORDT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Lake Forest College ↗
- Who funds Cedarville University ↗
- Who funds SAINT XAVIER UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EDGEWOOD UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL 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 Coleman Foundation Inc · Goldenberg Max Tw M G Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Circle of Service Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Ernest Wentcher Educational Fund · Marquette Bank Education Foundation · Best Walter & Edith 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 Sam & Mary Palumbo 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.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Amherst College Trustees — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Sam & Mary Palumbo Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sam & Mary Palumbo 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.