Skip to content
Foundation DossiersAlso receives grants: funding profile →

Illinois · Public charity

The Luster Foundation

THE LUSTER FOUNDATION is organized exclusively for charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes, supporting organizations that qualify as exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the internal revenue code.

$82k
Granted FY2023
2
Itemized grants FY2023
2
Organizations funded FY2023
0%
First-time grantees FY2023
Read the full brief
Itemized, FY2023
$50k
The rest is grants the schedule does not break out
Median grant, FY2023
$40,000
Largest grant, FY2023
$40,000
Organizations funded a year
2 to 14
FY2017 to FY2023
Total assets, FY2023
$21k

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2023, 0% of the organizations The Luster Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22’23
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20232$50k0%
FY20223$20k0%
FY20212$30k0%
FY20205$50k20%
FY201914$79k71%
FY201811$95k91%
FY20174$80kn/a
98% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2023.

Health$189kYouth Development$62kReligion$40kEmployment$25kInternational$25kPhilanthropy$21kHousing & Shelter$13kFood & Nutrition$10kOther$0

Top grantees

Largest grants in FY2023.

THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY$40,000
YOUTH GUIDANCE$10,000

Compare The Luster Foundation with peer funders

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Luster Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Luster 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.

About The Luster Foundation

How much does The Luster Foundation give?
The Luster Foundation reported 2 itemized grants totaling $50,000, out of $81,798 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2023 IRS filing. It funded between 2 and 14 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.
What does The Luster Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2023, its largest causes are Health (47%), Youth Development (15%), Religion (10%).
Does The Luster Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2023, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Where is The Luster Foundation based?
The Luster Foundation is based in IL.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 25 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $500 of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2023, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Luster’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home