· Private foundation
Skip & Meg Herman Family 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NOURISHING HOPE | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $10,000 |
| MONTANA LAND RELIANCE | $10,000 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $10,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $5,000 |
| THE SHANE CENTER | $5,000 |
| BILLINGS CLINIC FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| AMERICAN CANCER RESEARCH ALLIANCE | $2,500 |
| THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION - INNOVATION 80 | $2,500 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $1,500 |
| GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO | $1,000 |
| AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN RIVERS | $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, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 82% 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 +48% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 6 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k 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
- NHNOURISHING HOPE7× · 2019–2025 · $110k · revenue +210%
- APAMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2025 · $110k · revenue +167%
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO4× · 2022–2025 · $90k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- NPNW PRITZKR SCHOOL OF LAWone grant, 2019 · $50k
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEEgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +44%- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +75%
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.
Animal outlook is a national animal protection organization working to end the abuse of farmed animals using a variety of strategies, including investigations, legal advocacy, corporate and food system reform, and vegan outreach.
To improve and save lives through compassionate care, community engagement and advocacy for animals.
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.
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Seattle humane promotes the human-animal bond by saving and serving pets in need, regardless of age, ability, circumstance or geography.
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…
We exist to end the abuse of animals raised for food. this mission is executed by persuading companies and institutions to adopt animal welfare policies through negotiation and pressure campaigns, and then holding them accountable to their…
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…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Denver Dumb Friends League and the most unlike its peers is United in Light 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 42 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 5% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 62 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 NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds BILLINGS CLINIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SWEET GRASS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HOPE - THE PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MALOTO INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ABERCROMBIE & KENT PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Red Door Animal Shelter ↗
- Who funds CaringBridge ↗
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 · AbbVie Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Skip & Meg Herman 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.
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 Skip & Meg Herman Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Skip & Meg Herman Family 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.