· Private foundation
Stearns Family Charitable Fund
Its FY2024 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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k22 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $108k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HILTON HEAD CHRISTIAN ACADEMY | $45,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $17,500 |
| NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| ACCELERATE INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| GENEVA FOUNDATION OF PRES HOMES | $7,500 |
| NORTH SHORE UNIV HEALTH SYSTEM FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE CIVIC FEDERATION | $5,000 |
| ADVANCE ILLINOIS | $5,000 |
| NORTH LAWNDALE COLLEGE PREP | $5,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $4,000 |
| LYNN UNIVERSITY | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $2,500 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY WOMEN'S BOARD | $1,500 |
| COUNTRY CLUB OF FLORIDA SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–23, $48k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +37% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 6 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO6× · 2017–2024 · $116k · revenue +39%
- HHHILTON HEAD CHRISTIAN ACADEMY5× · 2020–2024 · $75k · revenue +48%
Northwestern University6× · 2017–2024 · $72k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- TCTHE CHICAGO CLUB PRESERVATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -95%
- NANORTHWESTERN ANNUAL FUNDone grant, 2021 · $10k
- LCLEE CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2018 · $6k
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 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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
We provide exemplary interdisciplinary programs for a community of scholar-practitioners within a distributed learning model grounded in student-driven inquiry and leading to enhanced knowledge.
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…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 43 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 15% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 83 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 FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds HILTON HEAD CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CLEARBROOK ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAWNDALE COLLEGE PREPARATORY CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Endeavor Health Clinical Operations ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE ILLINOIS NFP ↗
- Who funds Accelerate Institute ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds Bethesda Hospital Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO CLUB PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LYNN UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ERIE ELEMENTARY CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ORPHANS D/B/A NPH-USA ↗
- Who funds THE CIVIC FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ALLENDALE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARLETON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SKOKIE COUNTRY CLUB EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Satter Foundation · Lavin Family Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Frank Family Foundation · The Canning Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation 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 Stearns Family Charitable 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Florida Sheriffs Association Inc — 4% of income from government
- Lynn University Inc — 0% of income from government
- Caridad Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- Williams College — 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 Stearns Family Charitable Fund?
Find your warmest path to Stearns Family Charitable 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.