· Private foundation
The Joyce Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k20 grants · $97k
- $10k–50k124 grants · $2.9M
- $50k–250k276 grants · $30M
- $250k+50 grants · $19M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Chicago Public Media - Chicago Sun-Times | $1,000,000 |
| Education First Consulting LLC | $935,000 |
| IFF | $625,000 |
| The Aspen Institute Inc | $600,000 |
| Minnesota Department of Commerce - Energy & Utilities | $600,000 |
| National Parks Conservation Association | $576,000 |
| Civic News Company | $525,000 |
| Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc - Families and Workers Fund | $500,000 |
| Elevate Energy | $500,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500,000 |
| The Institute for College Access and Success Inc | $485,000 |
| Project Unloaded Inc | $472,440 |
| National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships Inc | $400,000 |
| Chicago Public Education Fund | $400,000 |
| Clean Wisconsin Inc | $385,000 |
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, $2.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of The Joyce Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 32% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 26% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +32% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
434 repeat relationships — 317 still active in FY2024, 117 since wound down; 106 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8.0M 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
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC5× · 2020–2024 · $3.3M · revenue +193%
University of Chicago5× · 2020–2024 · $2.7M · revenue +52%- CPCHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $2.5M · revenue +24%
Funded once
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $622k · revenue +63%- NLNATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES INSTITUTE INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $525k · revenue +35%
- PGPanorama Global - Hyphenone grant, 2021 · $500k
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
Council for court excellence's (cce's) mission is to bring people together to conduct research, educate, and advocate to make d.c.'s unique legal systems more just, equitable, and accountable to the community.
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
We empower directors and transform boards to be future ready.
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
Advancing Nonprofits is committed to strengthening the organizational health and support long-term development of small nonprofits on Chicagos west and south sides while prioritizing Black- and Latine-led community organizations.…
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grantmakers for Education and the most unlike its peers is Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 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 26 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
616 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 616 of the 859 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE ILLINOIS NFP ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Elevate Energy ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds The Education Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds The Institute for College Access & Success ↗
- Who funds CIVIC NEWS COMPANY ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CLEAN WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds FRESH ENERGY ↗
- Who funds TEACH PLUS INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN PLACE ↗
- Who funds NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LATINO POLICY FORUM ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES ↗
- Who funds WAVE EDUCATIONAL FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE URBAN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN ENVIROMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST ENERGY EFFICIENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN PLANNING COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Chicago Votes ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COUNCIL ON TEACHER QUALITY INC ↗
- Who funds Ed Allies ↗
- Who funds CIVIC CONSULTING ALLIANCE ↗
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: Field Foundation of Illinois · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · Walder Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Alphawood Foundation · The McKnight 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 Joyce 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.
- Rodel Charitable Foundation - De — 20% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Jobs for the Future Inc — 11% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- The Poynter Institute for Media Studies 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.