· Private foundation
The Gies 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 $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $63k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $303k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $1,685,000 |
| ACCELERATE INSTITUTE | $102,500 |
| CHRIST THE KING ACADEMY | $98,000 |
| BY THE HAND CLUB FOR KIDS | $51,600 |
| HOLY TRINITY HIGH SCHOOL | $50,850 |
| GLENWOOD SCHOOL FOR BOYS | $38,000 |
| Gigi's Playhouse | $25,000 |
| Chicago Area Track and Field | $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 (FY19–19, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +31% since the first grant, against -11% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- TJTHOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY5× · 2019–2023 · $1.4M · revenue +79%
Culver Educational Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $500k · revenue +73%- FTFOR THE CHILDREN8× · 2017–2024 · $107k · revenue +68%
Funded once
- MCMIDWESTERN CHRISTIAN ACADEMYone grant, 2021 · $150k
- CTCHRIST THE KINGone grant, 2017 · $50k
- LFLIFESONG FOR ORPHANS INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $31k · revenue +164%
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 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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
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.
Achieving international impact through world-class research and education in fundamental computer science and information technology.
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 Taylor University is to develop servant-leaders marked with a passion to minister Christ's redemptive love, grace, and truth to a world in need.
See Disclosure Above.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Founded In 2018, Teach St. Louis (formerly St. Louis Teacher Residency) launched to improve teacher quality and retention in St. Louis, a city where 40% of new teachers exit the classroom in their first three years. Teach St. Louis…
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
We create confident learners who lead lives of intellectual curiosity, self-knowledge, and social responsibility.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Big Shoulders Fund and the most unlike its peers is Thomas Jefferson University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 31 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 THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Accelerate Institute ↗
- Who funds Culver Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds By The Hand Club For Kids ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds FOR THE CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LIFESONG FOR ORPHANS INC ↗
- Who funds CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds LAZARUS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds Beyond Sports 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 · AbbVie Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Gies 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.