· Private foundation
The John a Miller Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k15 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $100k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $297k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF DENVER | $1,114,811 |
| HOOVER INSTITUTION - DEVELOPMENT OFFICE | $100,000 |
| PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION | $96,631 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $50,500 |
| EISENHOWER HEALTH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| WINNETKA PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATION | $20,000 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCATION | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HEALTH NETWORK FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| AM SHALOM | $5,900 |
| NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| YERKES FUTURE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MILKEN INSTITUTE | $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 (FY20–24, $32k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
42 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $29k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF DENVER8× · 2017–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +33%
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO6× · 2019–2024 · $301k · revenue +57%
- EMEisenhower Medical Center4× · 2021–2024 · $200k · revenue +48%
Funded once
- NHNORTHSHORE HEALTHSYSTEMSone grant, 2017 · $15k
- MFMetropolitan Family Servicesgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +89%
LAKE GENEVA FRESH AIR ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +7%
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.
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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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 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…
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.
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…
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…
The rockefeller university (the university) is a world renowned center for research and graduate education in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics, and physics. the university's 73 laboratories conduct both clinical and basic…
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.
The Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 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.
52 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. 52 of the 94 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 UNIVERSITY OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Chicago Blackhawks Foundation ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds WINNETKA PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNETWORK FOUNDATION FKA HEALTH NET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Accelerate Institute ↗
- Who funds ENCHANTED BACKPACK ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds THE MILKEN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds LAKE GENEVA FRESH AIR ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD PARK DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ROBERT CROWN CENTER ↗
- Who funds YERKES FUTURE 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: The Chicago Community Trust · John & Linda Anderson Charitable Foundation · Dean L & Rosemarie Buntrock Foundation · Carol Bernick Family Foundation · Otzen Family Foundation Incorporated · A G Cox Charity Trust Xxxxx9001 · The David & Colleen Anderson Charitable Foundation · The Kirch Foundation · The Griffith Family Foundation · Milton R Brown Family Foundation · The Anna Emery Hanson Charitable Foundation 1 · The Simms Family 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 John a Miller 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.
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% 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.