· Private foundation
The Colmar Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Colmar Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Mayo Clinic, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year The Colmar Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 8 organizations, $41k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k11 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AUDITORIUM THEATER | $15,000 |
| EASTER SEALS METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $9,000 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL | $7,000 |
| HORIZONS AT ASHLEY HALL | $4,000 |
| ERIKA'S LIGHTHOUSE | $1,400 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $1,000 |
| JOFFREY BALLET | $1,000 |
| AFRICAN WOMEN RISING | $555 |
| STONE CANYON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $525 |
| HUNTINGTON'S DISEASE SOCIETY | $500 |
| MISERICORDIA | $500 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES | $250 |
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 (FY19–20, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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 +85% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2019, 3 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2023, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION6× · 2017–2022 · $42k · revenue +54%- ESEASTER SEALS METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC5× · 2017–2021 · $34k · revenue +71%
- SBSANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL INC2× · 2021–2022 · $6k · revenue +239%
Funded once
- TMTHE MR HOLLAND'S OPUS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue -3%
- BFBELLOSGUARDO FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue -98%
- FMFIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue +15%
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Colmar Family Foundation - Southwest. 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 22 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) — 17% of your grantees by number, and just 90% 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, 2017–2025.
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. 21 of the 34 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 THE COLMAR FAMILY FOUNDATION - SOUTHWEST ↗
- Who funds THE JLC COLMAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE J&C COLMAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE MR HOLLAND'S OPUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ASHLEY HALL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Erikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression ↗
- Who funds BELLOSGUARDO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds LOVE HOPE STRENGTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds FRONTERA FARMER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN WOMEN RISING ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SRCC SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds FOX TUCSON THEATRE 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 · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · American Endowment Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Colmar 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.