· Private foundation
The Brinson Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k6 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k49 grants · $1.5M
- $50k–250k82 grants · $6.3M
- $250k+1 grant · $600k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JOHN'S HEALTH FOUNDATION | $600,000 |
| EISENHOWER HEALTH | $200,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION PARTNERSHIP FOR SAFE AND PEACEFUL COMMUNITIES | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS EDWARD H LEV | $141,700 |
| CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE CARNEGIE OBSERVATORIES INSTRUMENTATION PRO | $120,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS EDWARD H LEV | $120,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $120,000 |
| PRINCETON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ASTROPHYSICAL SCIENCES | $120,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $120,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $120,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO KAVLI INSTITUTE FOR COSMOLOGICAL PHYSICS | $120,000 |
| PRINCETON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ASTROPHYSICAL SCIENCES | $120,000 |
| PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE | $115,000 |
| CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE CARNEGIE OBSERVATORIES INSTRUMENTATION PRO | $115,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GALACTIC CENTER GROUP | $115,000 |
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, $453k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 72% of The Brinson Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +38% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
114 repeat relationships — 91 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 23 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.6M 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
- CICALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY5× · 2020–2024 · $101M · revenue +18%
- RURush University Medical Center5× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +30%
University of Chicago3× · 2020–2022 · $922k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- PUPRINCETON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OFone grant, 2023 · $240k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OFone grant, 2023 · $120k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA- DAVISone grant, 2022 · $118k
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 psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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…
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…
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 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…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
Achieving international impact through world-class research and education in fundamental computer science and information technology.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grantmakers for Education and the most unlike its peers is National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States. 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 38 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
129 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. 129 of the 181 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 CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds St John's Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds La Rabida Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds The Salk Institute for Biological Studies ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds LSST INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds Chicago Architecture Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE POSSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds HORATIO ALGER ASSN OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds METROSQUASH NFP ↗
- Who funds HIGH JUMP ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
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 · Circle of Service Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Finnegan Family Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Vivo Foundation · Cme Group Foundation · The Osa Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc · Mayer and Morris Kaplan 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 Brinson 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
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Brinson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Brinson 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.