· Private foundation
Sirius Fund
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k70 grants · $161k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $523k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $871k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $108,000 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $100,000 |
| THE ADVOCATES | $100,000 |
| SHEDD AQUARIUM | $100,000 |
| NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO - GIFT PROCESSING | $75,000 |
| THE COMMUNITY LIBRARY | $75,000 |
| SUN VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL | $62,500 |
| ST LUKE'S WOOD RIVER FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ROSALIND FRANKLIN UNIVERSITY (ATTN WENDY RHEAULT) | $50,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $50,000 |
| CHILDRENS ADVOCACY OF NORTH AND NORTHWEST COOK COUNTY | $40,000 |
| CHILDRENS ADVOCACY OF NORTH AND NORTHWEST COOK COUNTY | $31,340 |
| SEMESTER AT SEA | $30,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY SCULLING INC | $25,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $22k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 37% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +21% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
92 repeat relationships — 71 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 16 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $198k 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
- NFNATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $475k · revenue +130%
- RURush University Medical Center4× · 2022–2025 · $403k · revenue +6%
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC5× · 2021–2025 · $393k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- NCNATURE CONSERVANCY - IDAHO (STALKER CREEK PLEDGE)one grant, 2023 · $25k
- RFROSALIND FRANKLIN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2024 · $25k
- EIErikson Instituteone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue -9%
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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 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 Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
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."
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Sun Valley Fire Department. 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 44 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) — 1% 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.
101 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. 101 of the 157 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 NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds SUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER OF NORTH & NORTHWEST COOK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOULDER COMMUNITY HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S WOOD RIVER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR SHIPBOARD EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds WOOD RIVER LAND TRUST CO ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BLAINE COUNTY HUNGER COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COMMUNITY SCULLING INC ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ARTIS-NAPLES INC ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds HARRY CHAPIN FOOD BANK OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD SHARE INC ↗
- Who funds WONDERBOUND ↗
- Who funds Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE NAPLES PLAYERS INC ↗
- Who funds Atlantic Salmon Federation (US) Inc ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Motorola Solutions Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · AbbVie 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 Sirius Fund 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.
- Marine Biological Laboratory — 20% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation — 4% of income from government
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% of income from government
- Christ Child Society of Naples Inc — 3% of income from government
- Southeastern Guide Dogs 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 Sirius Fund?
Find your warmest path to Sirius Fund 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.