· Private foundation
The Brackthorn 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INSTITIUTE FOR JUSTICE | $3,500 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NATIONAL GALLER | $1,750 |
| PAWS CHICAGO | $1,000 |
| POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERCA | $1,000 |
| WOODLAND PATTERN BOOK CENTER | $500 |
| REASON FOUNDATION | $500 |
| C21 WOMEN'S ENSEMBLE | $200 |
| MAYWOOD FINE ARTS | $150 |
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 (FY17–20, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 27% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +80% since the first grant, against +53% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 2 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, 77% 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
- IFINSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE4× · 2017–2024 · $20k · revenue +57%
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY2× · 2017–2021 · $8k · revenue +45%- TRTHE REASON FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2024 · $5k · revenue +80%
Funded once
- GCGOSHEN CANCER CAREone grant, 2018 · $5k
- FWFrancis W Parker Schoolgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +31%
- JJJIM & JULIE BOEHEIM FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $5k
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 mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
The american political science association ("apsa") supports excellence in scholarship and teaching and informed discourse about politics, policy, and civic participation. the association promotes a lively, diverse community of scholars,…
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.
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…
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Our fundamental mission is to bring scholarly ideas to the world. we publish books that connect authors and readers across spheres of knowledge to advance and enrich the human conversation. we embrace the highest standards in our…
The peterson institute for international economics (piie) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Public Library Foundation and the most unlike its peers is C21 Womens Ensemble. 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 34 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
21 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 21 of the 37 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 INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY LONDON INC ↗
- Who funds Francis W Parker School ↗
- Who funds THE REASON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds GRAYWOLF PRESS ↗
- Who funds THE ATLAS SOCIETY LTD ↗
- Who funds NATIVE ARTS AND CULTURES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds PING Providing Instruments For The Next Generation ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MARC LUSTGARTEN PANCREATIC CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF NEWPORT COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PATTERN INC ↗
- Who funds CPS LIVES NFP ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S INN ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds C21 Womens Ensemble ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER 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: The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Brackthorn 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.
- Native Arts and Cultures Foundation 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.