· Private foundation
The Acorn 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k32 grants · $75k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $12k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY | $12,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION | $5,500 |
| DEPAUL COLLEGE PREP | $5,500 |
| COLBY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| THE FUND FOR SARAH LAWRENCE - SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF LINCOLN PARK HIGH | $3,000 |
| LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO | $3,000 |
| FRIENDS OF PAYTON SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| ACTION AGAINST HUNGER-USA | $2,400 |
| THE ACTORS' FUND OF AMERICA | $2,400 |
| THE JARRETT MEEKER FOUNDATION | $2,400 |
| THE CORNUCOPIA INSTITUTE | $2,400 |
| HILLEL INTERNATIONAL | $2,400 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $2,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF SAN DIEGO | $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 (FY20–24, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 71% 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.
30 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 4 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, 85% 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
- CCCHICAGO COLLEGIATE INC2× · 2020–2021 · $45k · revenue +2%
- KCKenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry3× · 2020–2024 · $23k · revenue +28%
- TLTHE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO3× · 2020–2024 · $10k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- SUSTANFORD UNIVERSITY 616one grant, 2022 · $1k
- EGELIZABETH GLASER PEDIATRIC AIDS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $1k · revenue -20%
- EWENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUPgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $1k · revenue +76%
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 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…
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…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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.
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…
Claremont Graduate University prepares individuals to be leaders for positive change in the world. Unique in its transdisciplinary approach, the University is dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and application of new knowledge and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and the most unlike its peers is Jarrett Meeker Foundation. 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 50 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.
30 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. 30 of the 42 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 COLLEGIATE INC ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds THE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE CATHERINE COOK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds The President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds Jarrett Meeker Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE ACTORS' FUND OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CORNUCOPIA INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LINCOLN PARK HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
- Who funds THE CAMPANILE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds HONESTREPORTINGCOM INC ↗
- Who funds ELIZABETH GLASER PEDIATRIC AIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP ↗
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 · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 The Acorn 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.
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% 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 The Acorn Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Acorn 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.