· Private foundation
The Bill Bass 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 $10k28 grants · $125k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $443k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $268k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $118,000 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| LURIE CHILDRENS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION | $46,000 |
| MALNATI BRAIN TUMOR INSTITUTE | $35,000 |
| SPECIAL CHILDRENS CHARITIES | $28,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $25,000 |
| CHICAGO POLICE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE NORA PROJECT | $20,000 |
| NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $18,000 |
| HAROLD E EISENBERG FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $138k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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.
93 repeat relationships — 49 still active in FY2024, 44 since wound down; 9 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; $70k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO8× · 2017–2024 · $824k · revenue +13%
- IIIllinois Institute of Technology6× · 2017–2023 · $325k · revenue +27%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago7× · 2018–2024 · $270k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF ILLIOIS I-FUNDone grant, 2022 · $50k
- NBNORTHWESTERN BRAIN TUMOR INSTITUTEone grant, 2017 · $35k
- JCJewish Community Centers of Chicagoone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +6%
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 GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
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.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
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.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
Ann & robert h. lurie children's hospital of chicago is dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a…
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Chicago Cancer Research Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame. 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 40 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 176 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 JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO POLICE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds HELPING HANDS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds HAROLD E EISENBERG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY RIZZO FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Greater Chicago Legal Clinic ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds IMERMAN ANGELS ↗
- Who funds National Campaign to Stop Violence ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds WOMEN EMPLOYED ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT PROMISES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL CANCER RESEARCH FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHAMPAIGN-URBANA BALLET ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds SECOND SENSE ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Circle of Service Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Sam I Am Foundation · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Baird 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 The Bill Bass 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.
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.