· Private foundation
The Henry and Gilda Buchbinder Family 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k6 grants · $75k
- $250k+1 grant · $5.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $5,226,783 |
| OSTEOGENISIS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| NORTHWESTEN UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $10,000 |
| WTTW | $10,000 |
| GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL | $10,000 |
| MILLENEUM PARK FOUNDATION | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 95% of your 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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 19 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO3× · 2023–2025 · $5.5M · revenue +29%
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago5× · 2017–2021 · $820k · revenue +33%
- MOMUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART4× · 2017–2021 · $79k · revenue +0%
Funded once
- NMNORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $60k
- AIART INSTITUTE SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $14k
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.
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 Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
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 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 arts club of chicago was formed as a means to encourage, foster, and develop higher standards of arts craftsmanship, and to maintain the city of chicago facility for the housing of galleries and exhibitions open to the public and free…
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
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 driehaus museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. its permanent collection and temporary…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grant Park Orchestral Association and the most unlike its peers is Columbus Arts Council. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 39 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 THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS AREA ARTS COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS ARTS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds NEAR NORTH MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Henry and Gilda Buchbinder 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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
How do I get to The Henry and Gilda Buchbinder Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Henry and Gilda Buchbinder 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.