· Private foundation
The Lyon Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k17 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $209k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $214k
- $250k+1 grant · $305k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $305,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $112,500 |
| METROPOLITAN FAMILY SERVICES | $51,000 |
| EMBARC | $50,000 |
| GATEWAY TO LEARNING | $37,500 |
| BLOOD CANCER UNITED | $25,000 |
| THE DOVETAIL PROJECT | $25,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOC | $20,363 |
| ASCENSION IL FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES | $20,000 |
| THE RYAN LICHT SANG BIPOLAR FOUNDAT | $18,250 |
| BY THE HAND CLUB FOR KIDS | $11,410 |
| MOD COLLECTIVE | $11,150 |
| EVERLOVED | $10,100 |
| UNITING VOICES CHICAGO | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $391k) 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +44% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 13 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $199k 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
- BCBLOOD CANCER UNITED INC6× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +4%
University of Chicago4× · 2021–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +34%- MFMetropolitan Family Services8× · 2017–2024 · $307k · revenue +332%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $38k
- SOSHIELD OF HOPE SALVATION ARMYone grant, 2018 · $26k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
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.
Curesearch's mission is to fund & support targeted & innovative cancer research with measurable results, & to be the authoritative source of information & resources for all those affected by children's cancer. see schedule o for…
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Stanley manne children's research institute strives to generate new knowledge and advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric diseases.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
The national fragile x foundation serves the entire fragile x community to live their best lives by providing the knowledge, resources, and tools until, and even after, more effective treatments and a cure are achieved.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
To advance cures and treatment of childhood cancer and other rare diseases.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired and the most unlike its peers is Hua Momona Foundation. 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 30 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
67 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. 67 of the 111 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 BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Metropolitan Family Services ↗
- Who funds EMBARC INC ↗
- Who funds UNITING VOICES ↗
- Who funds THE FORGE FOR FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds UNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds International Neighborhood Collaborative ↗
- Who funds THE RYAN LICHT SANG BIPOLAR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PILOT LIGHT ↗
- Who funds BARRINGTON CHILDRENS CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY TO LEARNING ↗
- Who funds IMERMAN ANGELS ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds PLANET HOPE ↗
- Who funds Culinary Care ↗
- Who funds By The Hand Club For Kids ↗
- Who funds WORKING IN THE SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ZACHARY PLANTZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DESIGNS FOR DIGNITY ↗
- Who funds Share our Spare ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds Nicholas D Sergi Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE MARFAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MOD COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
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 · AbbVie Foundation · Imc Chicago Charitable Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · The Kadens Family Foundation · Cme Group Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Lyon 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.
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 Lyon Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lyon 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.