· Private foundation
The John D & Leslie Henner Burns 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
- Under $10k4 grants · $18k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $111k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $61,000 |
| CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCESPEGGY NOTEBAERT MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| ALL FAITHS FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| THE STANFORD FUND | $5,000 |
| OWC SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM | $5,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $5,000 |
| CIVITAS ENSEMBLE | $3,000 |
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 11%. 89% 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 +58% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 19 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
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra9× · 2017–2025 · $381k · revenue +58%
- TCTHE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES6× · 2017–2022 · $173k · revenue +5%
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago5× · 2017–2021 · $50k · revenue +60%
Funded once
- TKTHE KENNEDY CENTERone grant, 2024 · $34k
- NMNEGAUNEE MUSIC INSTITUTEone grant, 2022 · $10k
- TCTHOREAU COLLEGE INCone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +8%
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.
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 adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Lookingglass theatre company is a national leader in the creation and presentation of innovative, cutting-edge theatrical work. lookingglass interweaves movement, circus arts and narrative in original and captivating ways. guided by an…
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Museum of Contemporary Art and the most unlike its peers is Womens Global Education Project. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 47 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 16% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 40 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 Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ALL FAITHS FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CIVITAS ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THOREAU COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CEDILLE CHICAGO NFP ↗
- Who funds LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BEN HOGAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WOMENS GLOBAL EDUCATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Hermitage Artist Retreat 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 · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 John D & Leslie Henner Burns 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.
- All Faiths Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- Hermitage Artist Retreat Inc — 1% 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 John D & Leslie Henner Burns Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The John D & Leslie Henner Burns 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.