· Private foundation
Susan & Robert Wislow Charitable 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $220k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $48,500 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $36,750 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $25,500 |
| NORTH CENTRAL COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $25,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $17,000 |
| AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM | $12,000 |
| MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| WBEZ | $10,000 |
| DEPAUL COLLEGE PREP | $10,000 |
| ERIKSON INSTITUTE | $8,000 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $5,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY | $5,000 |
| SHEDD AQUARIUM | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $2,000 |
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 (FY18–23, $61k) 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 +35% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 37 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra7× · 2017–2025 · $276k · revenue +58%
- RURush University Medical Center8× · 2017–2025 · $236k · revenue +51%
- EIErikson Institute9× · 2017–2025 · $236k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- TCTHE COMMERCIAL CLUB FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $44k · revenue +350%
- HCHEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +33%
- NMNWMH-DR MICHAEL M ABECASSIS TRANSPLANT INNOVATION ENDOWone grant, 2022 · $10k
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 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 chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
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 Illinois Humanities Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is Alphawood Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
88 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. 88 of the 137 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 Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Clayco Foundation ↗
- Who funds CIVIC CONSULTING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds North Central College ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds THE COMMERCIAL CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds HEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce 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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Frank Family Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · 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 Susan & Robert Wislow Charitable 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.
- Artists Association of Nantucket 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 Susan & Robert Wislow Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Susan & Robert Wislow Charitable 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.