· Private foundation
The Daniel and Genevieve Ratner 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CURE VIOLENCE GLOBAL | $20,000 |
| GOODMAN THEATRE | $10,000 |
| PEOPLE'S MUSIC SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| INDEPENDENCE INITIATIVE INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–19, $300k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +15% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 1 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CVCURE VIOLENCE GLOBAL5× · 2019–2025 · $559k · revenue +21%
- OBOPEN BOOKS LTD3× · 2017–2020 · $229k · revenue +49%
- ASASAH - SERVING THE PRIVATE SPECIAL EDUCATION COMMUNITY SINCE 1974 INC5× · 2018–2022 · $110k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- GAGWYNEDD-MERCY ACADEMYone grant, 2023 · $25k
CITY YEAR INCone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +15%- WTWOMEN TECH FOUNDERSone grant, 2017 · $8k
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.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
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.
Cinema/Chicago, the non-profit 501(c)(3) presenting organization of the Chicago International Film Festival, enriches the community through year-round programming devoted to international and independent cinema. We strengthen communication…
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
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 chicago academy for the arts transforms emerging artists through a curriculum and culture which connect intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity to impart the skills to lead and collaborate across diverse communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Theatre Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center. 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 31 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 35 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 CURE VIOLENCE GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LITERACY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT TELEVISION FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds ASAH - SERVING THE PRIVATE SPECIAL EDUCATION COMMUNITY SINCE 1974 INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ALCOTT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MEDIA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds The People's Music School ↗
- Who funds FULCRUM POINT NEW MUSIC PROJECT ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENCE INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds COLORECTAL CANCER ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CHICAGO THEATRES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VOTE RUN LEAD INC ↗
- Who funds KARAM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN ↗
- Who funds FREE SPIRIT MEDIA NFP ↗
- Who funds HANNA PERKINS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNDERSCORE THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
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 · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Greenleaf Avenue Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Yelp Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Daniel and Genevieve Ratner 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% 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 Daniel and Genevieve Ratner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Daniel and Genevieve Ratner 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.