· Private foundation
The Christopher L & M Susan Gust Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 45% of THE CHRISTOPHER L & M SUSAN GUST FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $275k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $655k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST IGNATIUS COLLEGE PREP | $525,000 |
| TEAM IMPACT | $300,000 |
| CONCUSSION LEGACY FOUNDATION | $265,529 |
| MISSION OF OUR LADY OF ANGELS CHURCH | $164,539 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITYLAB (FKA REHAB INSTIUTE OF CHICAGO) | $138,040 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO MISSION HOCKEY | $52,500 |
| THE NIGHT MINISTRY | $50,000 |
| USA HOCKEY FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL SPORTS CORP | $50,000 |
| NOURISHING HOPE (FKA LAKEVIEW FOOD PANTRY) | $50,000 |
| ILLINOIS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT REFUGEE RIGHTS | $25,000 |
| ROLFE PANCREATIC CANCER FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| HAVE DREAMS | $25,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA | $20,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $526k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +27% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
68 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 45 since wound down; 14 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $301k 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
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago8× · 2017–2024 · $4.9M · revenue +31%
- UOUniversity of Michigan7× · 2018–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +195% · 93% of their budget
- TITEAM IMPACT INC7× · 2017–2025 · $580k · revenue +181%
Funded once
- VGVISTA GRANDE VILLAone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +18%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
- SIST IGNATIUS HOCKEY CLUBone grant, 2021 · $13k
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 chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
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…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
To achieve parity in economic opportunity for people of color by advancing multiracial leadership in corporate governance, expanding the talent pipline for executive-level management, and growing minority businesses.
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Volunteers of america of illinois partners with the people we serve to create transformational and lasting change in their lives through programs that support, empower, and transform.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Team Impact Inc and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. 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 30 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 121 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 Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds TEAM IMPACT INC ↗
- Who funds CONCUSSION LEGACY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds ASPIRITECH NFP ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds HAVE DREAMS ↗
- Who funds Intentional Sports ↗
- Who funds OPTIONS FOR COLLEGE SUCCESS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JETS HOCKEY CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Michael Rolfe Pancreatic Cancer Foundation ↗
- Who funds NORTH CHICAGO PUBLIC EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEPHZIBAH CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MUDCATS SPORTS & SOCIAL CLUB ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds HAITI NURSING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MISSION AAA HOCKEY CLUB ↗
- Who funds USA HOCKEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · Baxter International Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Fred J Brunner Foundation · WP & HB White Foundation · Cme Group Community Foundation F/K/A Nymex Foundation · The Coleman Foundation Inc · Helen V Brach Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Motorola Solutions 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 Christopher L & M Susan Gust 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Christopher L & M Susan Gust Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Christopher L & M Susan Gust 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.