· Private foundation
Sherman & Kara Wright 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| City Year Chicago Ripples of Hope | $1,750 |
| Columbia College | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% of your 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 +34% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 2 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- OONEGOAL4× · 2018–2021 · $25k · revenue +7%
- FWFrancis W Parker School4× · 2018–2021 · $10k · revenue +38%
- NNNEAR NORTH MONTESSORI SCHOOL2× · 2017–2018 · $7k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- LCLurie Children's Hospital Foundatioone grant, 2020 · $5k
- SASHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +67%
- BSBRIGHT STAR COMMUNITY OUTREACH CORPone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue +4%
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 Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Academy for global citizenship charter school (agc) develops mindful leaders who take action both now and in the future to positively impact their communities and the world beyond.
Chicago Free School provides pre-kindergarten through 8th grade instruction and support activities. The faculty consists of qualified indiviuals with the appropriate education and experiende to provide students with the education that…
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
To create a school that dramatically transforms the lives of k-8 students and prepares them for success in college and in life through: the delivery of a rigorous and personalized academic program, a focus on holistic education, and the…
To equip all students in grades six through twelve with the academic skills, intellectual habits and character traits to succeed in the college of their choice, strenghten their communities and change the world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Near North Montessori School and the most unlike its peers is Evan Joseph Gerstein Foundation. 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 25 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 29 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 ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds 826CHI INC ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds NEAR NORTH MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT STAR COMMUNITY OUTREACH CORP ↗
- Who funds Camp for All Kids ↗
- Who funds PERSPECTIVES CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Florida Agricultural & Mechanical Univ Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Columbia College ↗
- Who funds Chicago Run ↗
- Who funds Chicago United for Equity ↗
- Who funds EVAN JOSEPH GERSTEIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds URBAN JUNCTURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds By The Hand Club For Kids ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ALEXS LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER AUBURN GRESHAM DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WOMEN EMPLOYED ↗
- Who funds YOUNG CHICAGO AUTHORS ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Allstate Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Joyce Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Sherman & Kara Wright 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.
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.