· Private foundation
Sheffield 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 $10k37 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $31k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Elawa Farm Foundation | $11,100 |
| The Church of the Holy Spirit | $10,000 |
| St Paul's Church | $10,000 |
| Gorton Community Center | $7,000 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | $6,000 |
| World Wildlife Fund | $5,000 |
| Shedd Aquarium | $5,000 |
| Lake Forest Open Lands Association | $3,000 |
| The Chi Psi Educational Trust | $2,500 |
| University of Chicago Booth School | $2,500 |
| Friends of the Lake Bluff Library | $1,500 |
| Lake Bluff Open Lands Association | $1,000 |
| Brain Chemistry Labs | $1,000 |
| The Nantucket Land and Water Counci | $1,000 |
| Glasa | $1,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $79k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
42 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 3 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $800 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
- GCGorton Community Center6× · 2020–2025 · $69k · revenue +171%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO6× · 2020–2025 · $31k · revenue +32%
- SASHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY6× · 2020–2025 · $30k · revenue +111%
Funded once
Chicago Zoological Societygraduatedone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +67%- APALPHA PSI DELTA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue -82%
- LCLurie Children's Foundationone grant, 2023 · $1k
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 wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
Overview - founded in boston by pioneering landscape architect and open space visionary charles eliot in 1891, the trustees is the nation's first and the commonwealth's largest conservation and preservation nonprofit.
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science 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 minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Seeing Eye Inc and the most unlike its peers is Veterans of Foreign Wars Department of New Hampshire. 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 50 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.
37 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. 37 of the 51 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 Gorton Community Center ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHI PSI EDUCATIONAL TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ELAWA FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE BLUFF OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds HOLDERNESS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds ETHEL WALKER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds THE SEEING EYE INC ↗
- Who funds METROSQUASH NFP ↗
- Who funds Mothers Trust Foundation ↗
- Who funds PAWS FOR PATRICK ↗
- Who funds RUFFED GROUSE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ST MARK'S SCHOOL OF SOUTHBOROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Historic Genesee Theatre ↗
- Who funds ALPHA PSI DELTA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds NANTUCKET LAND & WATER COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds ACHIEVE TAHOE ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
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: Fletcher Family Foundation · Hedberg Foundation Inc · Red Bird Hollow Foundation · Garrett Family Foundation · CMB Foundation · Butler Family Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Buchanan Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · AbbVie Foundation · The Sarah Spencer Foundation · Jay Whipple Family 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 Sheffield 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 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 Sheffield Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sheffield 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.