· Private foundation
Susan & Jerome Ettelson Fund
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k62 grants · $65k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $33k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ANTI-CRUELTY SOCIETY | $12,800 |
| FRIENDS OF ANIMAL CARE AND CONTROL | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $5,000 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $5,000 |
| GIVE KIDS THE WORLD VILLAGE | $5,000 |
| CRADLES TO CRAYONS | $5,000 |
| SHEDD AQUARIUM | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO COALITION FOR HOMELESS | $5,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $3,500 |
| MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY | $3,500 |
| FRANCIS W PARKER SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY | $2,500 |
| ORPHANS OF THE STORM ANIMAL SHELTER | $1,500 |
| ONE TAIL AT A TIME | $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 (FY17–25, $31k) 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 +31% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
94 repeat relationships — 60 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 5 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- TAThe Anti-Cruelty Society9× · 2017–2025 · $92k · revenue +52%
- SASHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $63k · revenue +67%
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $46k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- CPCHICAGO PUBLIC ART GROUPgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +131%
- CACHICAGO ANIMAL CARE AND CONTROLone grant, 2021 · $5k
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue -40%
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.
A champion for animals since 1967, PAWS is a nationally recognized leader - rehabilitating injured and orphaned wildlife, sheltering and adopting homeless cats and dogs, and educating people to make a better world for animals and people.
HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS INTERNATIONAL, FKA HUMANE SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL (HSI), works around the globe to promote the human-animal bond, rescue and protect dogs and cats, improve farm animal welfare, protect wildlife, promote animal-free…
Animal shelter for the protection and care of abused and neglected animals.
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.
All about animals rescue's mission is no more homeless pets.
Animal care sanctuary's lifesaving mission as a no kill organization envisions a community that promotes turning compassion into action for companion animals by: 1.) adopting healthy pet companions into loving homes. 2.) promoting the…
Founded in 2023, humane animal partners is a nonprofit no-kill animal care and adoption center. we are committed to providing for the needs of homeless and owned dogs and cats in our community. we make "friends for life" by connecting…
Animal Humane Society (AHS) established in 1878 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 1891 works to engage the hearts, hands, and minds of the community to help animals. AHS's vision is to compassionately and…
To compassionately serve pets and the people who love them.
Pet animal welfare society of ct (paws), established in 1962, is a no-kill animal rescue shelter dedicated to the rescue and adoption of our community's homeless and abused dogs and cats. paws efforts are focused on three critical needs:…
To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. enacting good laws depends upon electing good lawmakers, and we remind voters which candidates care about and support animal issues.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Defenders of Animal Rights Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Rolling Dog Farm. 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 39 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) — 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 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.
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 143 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 The Anti-Cruelty Society ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CRADLES TO CRAYONS INC ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds TREE HOUSE HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GIVE KIDS THE WORLD INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC ART GROUP ↗
- Who funds THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY IN TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds Felines Inc ↗
- Who funds ORPHANS OF THE STORM ↗
- Who funds ALIVE Rescue NFP ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN HUMANE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ONE TAIL AT A TIME NFP ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S HUMANE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ↗
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: PC Fund for Animals Charitable Tr · Bradford Family Foundation · Surendra and Karen Gupta Arc Foundation · Seckinger Foundation Corporation · Amica Companies Foundation · Joyce a Ward Foundation · The Gerald B Shreiber Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Patricia Florence Miller Trust · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · Leslie L Alexander Foundation Inc · The Galoney-Strubbe Charitable Foundation 19-Rp683
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 Susan & Jerome Ettelson 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.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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 Susan & Jerome Ettelson Fund?
Find your warmest path to Susan & Jerome Ettelson 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.