· Private foundation
Sanborn Family Foundation
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $275k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $100,000 |
| BIG SHOULDERS | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| BARNSTABLE LAND TRUST | $20,000 |
| HOBE SOUND COMMUNITY CHEST | $20,000 |
| EVERGLADES FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| LOBLOLLY FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| EDUCATION FNDTN MARTIN COUNTY | $10,000 |
| MANHATTAN INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| ST PIUS CHURCH AND SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| JOSEPHINUM ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| TREASURE COAST WILDLIFE CENTER | $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 (FY23–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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.
38 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 17 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $150k 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
- STSTEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY2× · 2020–2021 · $100k · revenue +97%
- BSBig Shoulders Fund3× · 2020–2022 · $75k · revenue +67%
- BLBARNSTABLE LAND TRUST INC4× · 2022–2025 · $50k · revenue +237%
Funded once
- CRCRISTO REY HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $70k
- LALA ANNUAL FUNDone grant, 2020 · $20k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $10k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Seeks to expand the boundaries of theater, producing, performing and presenting works of literary, experimental and educational value. provide a home for outstanding artists, a training ground for young artists (including an extensive…
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…
See schedule o for organization's mission statementmission statement: the huntington theatre company engages, inspires, entertains and challenges audiences with theatrical productions that range from the classics to new works; we train and…
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 mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
Worcester center for performing arts promotes and/or hosts more than 250 performances and welcomes more than 150,000 attendees each year. the hanover theatre conservatory reaches more than 700 students in theatre, technical theatre and…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
To engage audiences and artists alike with exceptional performances, inspired writing and superior productions that motivate us to think harder, to feel more deeply, to laugh more fully and to reflect on ourselves and the world in which we…
We bring los angeles together through exuberant, surprising productions of classical plays as well as new works. we address the inequity of access to the performing arts through free and low-cost programming. we create theater that is…
Engaging audiences in dynamic re-imaginings of classic works, as well as premiere productions that celebrate new voices and innovative viewpoints.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Museum of Contemporary Art and the most unlike its peers is Their Lives Matter. 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 49 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 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.
28 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. 28 of the 69 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 ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds HOBE SOUND COMMUNITY CHEST INC ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds BARNSTABLE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BRADLEY IMPACT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Solace Friends Inc ↗
- Who funds Jupiter Medical Center Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WIREPOINTS CORP ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
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 · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Sanborn 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Barnstable Land Trust Inc — 4% of income from government
- Jupiter Medical Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Sturgis Library — 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 Sanborn Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sanborn 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.