· Private foundation
The Gallagher Family Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k2 grants · $7k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $377k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $713k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MARKLUND CHILDREN'S HOME | $142,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO | $92,500 |
| BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE | $87,000 |
| CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES INC | $85,000 |
| MOBILE C A R E FOUNDATION | $80,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $65,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING JESUIT COLLEGE PREPARATORY SCHOOL | $56,000 |
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $55,000 |
| INNER CITY IMPACT | $50,000 |
| BROOKLINK | $42,000 |
| MISERICORDIA | $31,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| ANNUAL CATHOLIC APPEAL | $30,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME | $26,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO (NEW HOPE APARTMENTS) | $25,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 5% 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.
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 +67% since the first grant, against +46% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2023, 9 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- MCMARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME7× · 2017–2023 · $767k · revenue +73%
- MCMOBILE CARE FOUNDATION4× · 2019–2023 · $370k · revenue +175%
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY7× · 2017–2023 · $340k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- MCMOBILE C A R E FOUNDATION (FOR PATRICK STEIN FUND)one grant, 2020 · $75k
- BHBOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPEone grant, 2017 · $50k
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +46%
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.
Ann & robert h. lurie children's hospital of chicago is dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a…
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 Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
Our mission is to strengthen and heal families and individuals from all walks of life through clinical service, education and research.
Create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite and empower the promise of youth. we nurture children, strengthen communities and believe that inherent in every child is the ability to succeed and thrive in life.
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 niu foundation's mission is to energize and connect the private sector with the niu community to secure and steward resources that support the future and growth of niu.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Northwestern memorial healthcare is an integrated healthcare system, consisting of multiple hospitals (including northwestern memorial hospital, an academic medical center) and networks of physicians and healthcare professionals, where the…
The Lycee Francais de Chicago, driven by our core values of respect, responsibility and the joy of learning, empowers students to grow into active global citizens.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Big Shoulders Fund and the most unlike its peers is Gamechangers 65-66 Foundation. 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 42 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) — 0% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 46 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 MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds MOBILE CARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HOPE IGNITES CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds BROOKLINK INC ↗
- Who funds Emmaus Ministries ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds Operation Warm Inc ↗
- Who funds Inner City Impact ↗
- Who funds ARMENIAN RELIEF MISSION ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds New Foundation of Hope ↗
- Who funds Training Leaders International ↗
- Who funds Erikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S TUMOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds YOUTH CHORAL THEATER OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds American Brain Tumor Association ↗
- Who funds National Alopecia Areata Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE NEEDY FAMILY FUND ↗
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: Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Robert R McCormick Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Baird Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund
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 Gallagher Family 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 Gallagher Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Gallagher Family 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.