· Private foundation
Sheehan 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 $10k45 grants · $96k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $146k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROCKING THE BOAT | $40,000 |
| EAGLES WINGS | $25,000 |
| MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM | $10,500 |
| STEM ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| SAVE THE SOUND | $10,000 |
| MILWAUKEE PARKS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HORIZON FOR HOMELESS | $10,000 |
| SAVE THE SOUND | $10,000 |
| ONE CHANCE TO GROW UP | $10,000 |
| FIELDS FOR KIDS PROGRAM | $10,000 |
| CHATHAM ORPHEUM THEATRE | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| HORIZON FOR HOMELESS | $5,000 |
| CAPE COD COMMUNITY FISH | $5,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $51k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 66% 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.
43 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 27 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, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $143k 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
- KCKEYS CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2024 · $26k · revenue +19%
- SASTEM ALLIANCE OF LARCHMONT- MAMARONECK INC2× · 2023–2024 · $20k · revenue +13%
YMCA OF THE NORTH SHORE INC2× · 2023–2024 · $15k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- CTCONTRIBUTION TO COLLEGE OF HOLY CROSSone grant, 2020 · $25k
- LWLITTLE WOMEN'S FUND OF GR MILWAUKEEone grant, 2023 · $20k
- GTGrant to Jones River Watershed Associationone grant, 2017 · $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.
To reach a new generation of radio listeners on air, online and in the community with a compelling selection of music and public affairs programming. the corporation celebrates milwaukee music, arts, heritage, and culture by supporting and…
Making the arts accessible to all
Our mission is to ensure that the people of greater boston benefit from a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive waterfront, harbor, and islands; these spaces are equitable, accessible, and adapted to climate change; and to ensure our public,…
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
The wisconsin maritime museum connects all people with wisconsin's waterways, by engaging and educating the public about wisconsin's maritime history, wisconsin's world war ii submarines, uss cobia, and the great lakes. the wisconsin…
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
Inspiring individuals and communities through exceptional music education, accessible to all.
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
Milwaukee water commons is helping catalyze milwaukee as a true model water city-a place where we all have a stake in the health of our waters and all share in their stewardship and benefits. we are advancing our community envisioned water…
The milwaukee public museum inspires curiosity, excites minds and increases desire to preserve and protect our world's natural and cultural diversity through exhibitions, educational programs, collections and research.
Lake Michigan is one of Wisconsin's greatest assets, and its water is critical to the state's future. The Fund for Lake Michigan is here to help sustain the Lake on behalf of the people and places that depend on it. Our goal is to have a…
Massachusetts taxpayers foundation provides public & private sector decision makers with accurate, timely, unbiased research & constructive solutions that drive public policy in order to strengthen the state's finances & position the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee and the most unlike its peers is Stem Alliance of Larchmont- Mamaroneck 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 32 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) — 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 13% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 111 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 ROCKING THE BOAT INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KEYS CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds STEM ALLIANCE OF LARCHMONT- MAMARONECK INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE SOUND ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF THE NORTH SHORE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HARWICH CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
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: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Sheehan 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.
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Ymca of the North Shore Inc — 6% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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.