· Private foundation
The Mardi Gras Fund
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 $10k16 grants · $78k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GIRLS GROUP | $10,000 |
| ALBANY PARK THEATRE PROJECT | $8,000 |
| THE CLEVELAND FOUNDRY | $7,500 |
| UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATER | $6,000 |
| CHICAGO DANZTHEATRE ENSEMBLE | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO JAZZ PHILHARMONIC | $5,000 |
| ART HOUSE | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHANY ORCHESTRAS | $5,000 |
| MARWEN | $5,000 |
| CHAUTAUQUA ARTS ED | $3,000 |
| CHICAGO WEST COMMUNITY CENTER | $3,000 |
| FREE SPIRIT MEDIA | $3,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +93% since the first grant, against +47% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 7 since wound down; 4 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
- UMUNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY8× · 2017–2024 · $34k · revenue +93%
GIRLS GROUP8× · 2017–2024 · $32k · revenue +121%- APAlbany Park Theater Project8× · 2017–2024 · $30k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- YOYMCA of Akron Make a Splashone grant, 2017 · $4k
- FCFlying Children's Art Centerone grant, 2017 · $4k
- RARiverside Arts Center Foundation Incone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue +19%
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.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Constellation is a performing arts presenter with an emphasis on forward- thinking practices, particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
To enrich the lives of our community through dance education and performance while developing Chicago's native talent pool in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism & ethnic diversity.
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
Create connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration.
The mission of Constellation Stage & Screen is to produce world-class theater and film that impacts the national performing arts industry through new work development. Constellation's productions, community events, and education programs…
To ignite the power of jazz music education and transform lives by fostering creative self-expression, community, teamwork, and diversity.
Ballet Chicago is a professional track school of ballet that creates exceptional dancers. It makes classical ballet training accessible to all. Its founders Daniel Duell and Patricia Blair carry on George Balanchines legacy by providing…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cleveland Public Theatre Inc and the most unlike its peers is Art House Inc. 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 29 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 UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GIRLS GROUP ↗
- Who funds Jazzistry ↗
- Who funds Albany Park Theater Project ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Jazz Philharmonic ↗
- Who funds Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS ↗
- Who funds PROJECT DANZTHEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ART HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FREE SPIRIT MEDIA NFP ↗
- Who funds Hands On Sports Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND FOUNDRY ↗
- Who funds PLAYMAKERS LABORATORY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds Riverside Arts Center Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago West Community Music Center ↗
- Who funds WORKING IN CONCERT ↗
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: Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Harry a and Margaret D Towsley Foundation · Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Dte Energy Foundation · Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · AbbVie Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Mardi Gras Fund 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 Mardi Gras Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Mardi Gras Fund 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.