· Private foundation
The Dover 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CMS FOUNDATION INC | $2,819,580 |
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 (FY20–25, $6.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 10% of The Dover 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. Read by recipient address, 97% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 88% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +53% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- CFCMS Foundation Inc6× · 2020–2025 · $6.6M · revenue +222% · 76% of their budget
- KCKenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry2× · 2020–2021 · $950k · revenue +28%
- SASHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY2× · 2020–2021 · $280k · revenue +111%
Funded once
- CSCHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATERone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +8%
- DCDUPAGE CHILDREN'S MUSEUMgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $80k · revenue +68%
- R2Ride 2 Recovery dba Project Heroone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -83%
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
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…
The University of Indianapolis champions lifelong learning through relevant and innovative education that fosters experiential learning, diverse perspectives, service for impact, and a global mindset.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Education and Research
Roosevelt university is an independent, non-profit, metropolitan university and national leader in educating socially conscious citizens for active and dedicated lives as leaders in their professions and their communities. the university's…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Benedictine University is an inclusive academic community dedicated to teaching and learning, scholarship and service, truth and justice, as inspired by the Catholic intellectual tradition, the social teaching of the Church, and the…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Illinois Inc and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. 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 40 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
75 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. 75 of the 89 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 CMS Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds DUPAGE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds INDO AMERICAN COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds GADS HILL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Midtown-Metro Achievement Centers ↗
- Who funds ST AMBROSE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds Ride 2 Recovery dba Project Hero ↗
- Who funds JUVENILE PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds KOHL CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF GREATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA VETERAN INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON RIVERFRONT DEVELOPMENT MADISON RIVERFRONT DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds AGC LTD ↗
- Who funds MONADNOCK UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSHINE GOSPEL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE KING'S DAUGHTERS' HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Nia Community Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CARES INC ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative ↗
- Who funds World Affairs Council - Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky ↗
- Who funds SALISBURY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds The President and Trustees of Colby College ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHARED HARVEST FOODBANK INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds EXODUS FINANCIAL SERVICES ↗
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 · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Dolores Kohl Education Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group
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 Dover 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.
- Autism Society of America Inc — 8% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% 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.