· Private foundation
The David Herro Charitable Foundation
Its FY2021 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 FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- $10k–50k5 grants · $110k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $539k
- $250k+3 grants · $3.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HF Foundation Inc | $3,423,046 |
| Keystone Church | $250,000 |
| Big Shoulders Fund | $250,000 |
| Institute of Contemporary Art Miami | $167,000 |
| Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation | $150,000 |
| Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer | $100,000 |
| HF Foundation Inc | $72,471 |
| Make-A-Wish Foundation | $50,000 |
| Friends of Sarnelli House | $25,000 |
| Chicago Historical Society | $25,000 |
| Cristo Rey Jesuit High School | $25,000 |
| Catholic Charities USA | $25,000 |
| Our Lady of Grace | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–20, $1.0M) 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.
19 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2021, 14 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $310k 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
- HFHF Foundation Inc2× · 2018–2021 · $5.2M · revenue +761% · 100% of their budget
- MCMIAMI CITY BALLET INC2× · 2018–2020 · $3.0M · revenue +50%
- BSBig Shoulders Fund5× · 2017–2021 · $1.7M · revenue +67%
Funded once
- CFCHARTER FUND INC D/B/A CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $750k · revenue +221%
- AFAmericans for Prosperity Fndone grant, 2017 · $500k
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicagograduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +35%
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.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
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 american federation of arts initiates and organizes a national and international program of art exhibitions, publications, and educational activities to benefit the museum community and enrich the public's experience and understanding…
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
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 music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
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…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is Hf Foundation Inc. 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 39 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 45 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 HF Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MIAMI CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds CHARTER FUND INC D/B/A CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH FUND ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART MIAMI INC ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ADVANCEMENT IN THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST ATHLETES AGAINST CHILDHOOD CANCER INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds UDT - SEAL MUSEUM ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds TWYLA THARP DANCE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TATE AMERICAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUBOVITCH DANCE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds SERPENTINE AMERICAS FOUNDATION FKA AMERICAS FOUNDATION OF THE SERPENTINE GA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF SARNELLI HOUSE UA ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN FRIENDS OF GWPF INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds WINGS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SECUREFUTURES FOUNDATION INC ↗
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: HF Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · The Ford Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · United Way Worldwide · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · 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 David Herro Charitable 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.
- National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Inc — 0% 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
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Find your warmest path to The David Herro Charitable 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.