How much does The McDermott Foundation give?

The McDermott Foundation reported 14 grants totaling $35,500 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 16 and 28 organizations a year over FY2020 to FY2024.

What does The McDermott Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2020 to FY2025, its largest causes are Religion (25%), Arts & Culture (21%), Health (19%).

Who are The McDermott Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2020 to FY2025: Kenilworth Union Church ($68k), Rush University Medical Center ($27k), Chicago Symphony Orchestra ($20k).

Does The McDermott Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 18% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The McDermott Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as The McDermott Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The Chicago Community Trust, American Endowment Foundation, Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc.

Where is The McDermott Foundation based?

The McDermott Foundation is based in IL.

The McDermott Foundation

The McDermott Foundation at a glance Also receives grants: funding profile →

· Private foundation

The McDermott 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.

$36k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$15k

Largest

01What it funds

0191% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Religion$69kArts & Culture$57kHealth$54kEducation$41kPhilanthropy$19kHuman Services$9kEnvironment$5kRecreation & Sports$3kOther$0

02FY2025 · 14 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k13 grants · $21k
$10k–50k1 grant · $15k

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$264k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Kenilworth Union Church	$15,000
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	$5,000
Rush University	$5,000
University of Chicago	$2,000
Wake Forest University	$2,000
Evanston Community Foundation	$1,000
Washington State University	$1,000
HPFF	$1,000
Dartmouth University	$1,000
Hawaii Public Radio	$500
Georgia Institute of Technology	$500
Bucknell University	$500
DePauw University	$500
Individual grant recipient	$500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY21–21, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

80%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$204k · 27 repeat orgs$52k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +33% since the first grant, against +16% for those funded once.

27 repeat relationships: 12 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$204k

$52k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+33%

+16%

Still filing today

56%

50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationArts & CultureHealthEnvironmentRecreation & SportsAnimalsOther

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.

Backed again, and grew

RU
Rush University Medical Center
6× · 2020–2025 · $27k · revenue +30%
CS
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
4× · 2020–2025 · $20k · revenue +71%
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
4× · 2022–2025 · $12k · revenue +18%

Funded once

PP
Planned Parenthood
one grant, 2020 · $25k
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2020 · $10k
WT
WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC
one grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +16%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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.

Education

William Marsh Rice University

As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…

Education

Columbia College Chicago

The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.

Education

Trustees of Tufts College

Education and Research

Education

Marine Biological Laboratory

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…

Science & Tech

University of New Haven

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…

Education

Vanderbilt University

See Disclosure Above.

Education

Williams College

Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.

Education

University of Miami

See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.

Education

The Trustees of Princeton University

Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…

Education

President and Fellows of Harvard College

Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.

Education

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is an independent, research-oriented university with broadly based strengths in health, including medicine, nursing and dentistry; in engineering; in the arts and sciences; and in law, management and social…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northwestern University; the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

27 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 27 of the 47 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

27/27

Grantees still filing

23/27

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$145,663Arts & Culture$43,000Education$42,300Health$28,500Human Services$10,000Philanthropy$5,500Recreation & Sports$3,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

The Chicago Community TrustIL12.4× affinity4 shared granteesties to 9 of 9Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Chicago Community Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The McDermott Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The McDermott Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on McDermott’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