· Private foundation
The Bluhm 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k30 grants · $609k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+8 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $4,500,000 |
| MILKEN INSTITUTE | $4,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $700,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $609,960 |
| WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART | $500,000 |
| STEPPENWOLF THEATRE CO | $275,000 |
| THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST | $250,000 |
| ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE | $250,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM | $200,000 |
| CHICAGO CARES | $150,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO | $125,790 |
| AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| YOUTH GUIDANCE | $100,000 |
| ONEGOAL | $100,000 |
| HORIZONS NATIONAL STUDENT ENRICHMENT PROGRAM INC | $100,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $798k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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 +34% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
95 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2024, 58 since wound down; 20 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $546k 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
Northwestern University5× · 2018–2023 · $7.1M · revenue +33%- WMWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART4× · 2018–2024 · $6.2M · revenue +125%
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO7× · 2018–2024 · $6.2M · revenue +34%
Funded once
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEEgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $550k · revenue +44%- TBTHE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $333k
- CCCHOOSE CHICAGO FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue +14%
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 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.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
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.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Be Like Tom Inc Nfp. 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 33 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 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% 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.
150 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. 150 of the 185 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 Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN FIRST FUND THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CARES INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Youth Guidance ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL INC ↗
- Who funds Institute for Nonviolence Chicago ↗
- Who funds EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY SUPPORT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds CHOOSE CHICAGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EDUCATION REFORM NOW INC ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds HIGH JUMP ↗
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: Circle of Service Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Zell Family Foundation · Frank Family 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 Bluhm 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Cox Science Center and Aquarium Inc — 6% of income from government
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% of income from government
- Guitars Over Guns Organization 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.