· Private foundation
The Lawlor 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k36 grants · $87k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $30k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $10,000 |
| CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL UNION | $10,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $8,000 |
| OXFAM AMERICA | $8,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DESPOSITORY | $6,000 |
| THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE | $4,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR HOMAN SQUARE | $4,000 |
| CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES | $4,000 |
| BONAVENTURE HOUSE | $3,500 |
| DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY | $3,000 |
| CNEWA | $3,000 |
| URBAN INITIATIVES | $3,000 |
| SAINTS FAITH HOPE AND CHARITY | $2,500 |
| GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND | $2,000 |
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, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
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.
45 repeat relationships — 38 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 1 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; $2k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $40k · revenue +39%
OXFAM-AMERICA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $36k · revenue +3%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY5× · 2020–2024 · $30k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- PCPAWS CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue +210%
- GUGEORGETOWN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2023 · $1k
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.
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
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…
Education and Research
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.
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…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
Achieving international impact through world-class research and education in fundamental computer science and information technology.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Blood Cancer United Inc. 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 48 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 49 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 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR HOMAN SQUARE F/K/A HOMAN ARTHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds URBAN INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLDS ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES AND MAINTENANCE FOR THE ELDERLY INC ↗
- Who funds THE GREAT BOOKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOG FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds HADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Association for Research and Education in Science ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Lawlor 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.
- Oxfam-America Inc — 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.