· Private foundation
Straus Family Foundation
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 $10k24 grants · $87k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $10,000 |
| HOPE CHICAGO | $7,000 |
| BERNIE'S BOOK BANK | $5,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| EVANSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CELEBRATE THE BEAT | $5,000 |
| SKIDMORE COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| THE CONSERVATION FUND | $5,000 |
| MAKE A WISH FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $5,000 |
| FORMAN SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| CAMPERSHIPS FOR NEBAGAMON | $5,000 |
| LAMBDA LEGAL | $3,000 |
| TURNING POINT HEALTH CENTER | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY ASSOCIATION (AGPA) | $3,000 |
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, $19k) 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 +19% since the first grant, against -2% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 31 since wound down; 11 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- CNCAMP NEBAGAMON FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $25k · revenue +239%
- FSFORMAN SCHOOL INC7× · 2017–2024 · $22k · revenue +19%
- AJA JUST HARVEST4× · 2019–2024 · $13k · revenue +213%
Funded once
- LJLITTLE JOHN'S RESTAURANT INCone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue 0%
- HAHEARTLAND ALLIANCEone grant, 2021 · $5k
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LANDone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +1%
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.
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…
Cdp north america, inc. 's ("cdp-na") vision for the future is a thriving economy that works for people and planet in the long term. we focus investors and companies on taking urgent action to build a truly sustainable economy by measuring…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
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 common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
For over 60 years, counterpart international has partnered with communities worldwide to turn local ideas into lasting solutions, connecting local vision with global opportunity. (continued on schedule o)we believe people closest to the…
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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 Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Chicago Cred 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 36 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) — 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 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.
61 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. 61 of the 87 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 CELEBRATE THE BEAT ↗
- Who funds CAMP NEBAGAMON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FORMAN SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds Evanston Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds A JUST HARVEST ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE JOHN'S RESTAURANT INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds American Group Psychotherapy Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago Cred Inc ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LAMBDA LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOC FOR EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds EVANSTON SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL GHOST RANCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Fight the New Drug Inc ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Turning Point Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FEED THE CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION FOR CONSCIOUSNESS -BASED EDUCATION AND WORLD PEACE ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND ↗
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 · Evanston Community Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Weiner-Ellman Family Foundation · Elizabeth Beidler Tisdahl Foundation · Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation · Finnegan Family Foundation · Frankel Family Foundation · Northwestern University · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur 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 Straus 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.
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% of income from government
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% 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.