· Private foundation
The Lucille & Joseph Block 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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY - THE BLOCK MUSEUM LEADERSHIP CIRCLE | $5,000 |
| AIDS FOUNDATION OF CHICAGO | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $4,500 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION | $3,500 |
| THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $3,000 |
| ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY | $3,000 |
| NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER | $3,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $2,500 |
| THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY | $2,500 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY (DBA - CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN) | $2,000 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $2,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMONS ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC (WBEZ) | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $33k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO9× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +13%
- NSNORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $26k · revenue +38%
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO6× · 2020–2025 · $18k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- WWYCCone grant, 2017 · $500
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Northwestern is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 35 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 JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Roosevelt University ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COUNCIL FOR YOUTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Chicago Commons Association ↗
- Who funds AIDS Foundation of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
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 Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Lucille & Joseph Block 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.
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.