· Private foundation
Sargent Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k52 grants · $770k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $395k
- $250k+1 grant · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LOYOLA ACADEMY | $350,000 |
| LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS | $125,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $120,000 |
| BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE OF ILLINOIS | $50,000 |
| CRISTO REY JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| DING' DARLING WILDLIFE SOCIETY | $50,000 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $45,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $40,000 |
| PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART | $40,000 |
| CHICAGO MARITIME SOCIETY | $30,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $30,000 |
| ERIKSON INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| MISERCORDIA | $25,000 |
| CHI ARTS | $25,000 |
| FISH OF SANIBEL-CAPTIVA INC | $20,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $268k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 85% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +41% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
64 repeat relationships — 60 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 1 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra5× · 2020–2024 · $580k · revenue +71%
- HIHOPE IGNITES CHICAGO5× · 2020–2024 · $227k · revenue +45%
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC5× · 2020–2024 · $190k · revenue ×16
Funded once
- RHRENALIS HEALTHone grant, 2022 · $6k
- BYBELOW YOUR BELTone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue 0%
- GLGLADIOLUS LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER INCone grant, 2020 · $2k
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.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
To excite, engage, and transform diverse audiences with the beauty and power of music.
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…
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
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."
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife 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 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 72 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 Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds HOPE IGNITES CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds The Cradle Foundation ↗
- Who funds DING DARLING WILDLIFE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Natures Farm Camp LLC ↗
- Who funds FISH OF SANIBEL-CAPTIVA INC ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds HADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds CLINIC FOR THE REHABILITATION OF WILDLIFE INC ↗
- Who funds Willow International Everfree ↗
- Who funds JUDD GOLDMAN ADAPTIVE SAILING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANIBEL-CAPTIVA CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THIRD COAST PERCUSSION NFP ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SINFONIETTA INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
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 · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · John R Halligan Charitable Fund · The Siragusa Family Foundation · Fifth Third Chicagoland Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc
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 Sargent 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.
- Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation — 4% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% 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.