· Private foundation
The Michael and Jacqueline Ferro 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
- $10k–50k2 grants · $62k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $64k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DKMS | $64,184 |
| PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION | $47,500 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO | $14,000 |
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%. 93% 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.
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 +57% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 1 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, 49% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $64k 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
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA3× · 2020–2022 · $129k · revenue +8%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO2× · 2023–2024 · $124k · revenue +2%
- PCPROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION2× · 2018–2024 · $123k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- CMClaremont McKenna Collegegraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +44%
- LOLyric Opera of Chicagograduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +33%
- LHLEO HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2019 · $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.
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
For more than 125 years, the mission of the johns hopkins hospital has been to lead the world in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and to train tomorrow's great physicians, nurses and scientists. above all, we aim to provide the…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The lustgarten foundation is the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research in the world. see schedule o.the lustgarten foundation is boldly leading the way through hope and innovation, turning fear into action through education…
Please see schedule o
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Susan g. komen has an unmatched, comprehensive 360-degree approach to fighting breast cancer across all fronts and supporting millions of people in the u.s. and in countries worldwide. we advocate for policies to protect patients, drive…
The foundation's objective is to fund breakthrough gastrointestinal (gi) cancer research, including clinical trials and studies, at the robert h. lurie comprehensive cancer center of northwestern university.additionally, another objective…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Howard a and Judith K Tullman Foundation for the Arts. 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 32 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 BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds PROSTATE CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Claremont McKenna College ↗
- Who funds ECHOING GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds DKMS ↗
- Who funds HIPPOCRATIC CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Plantagenets Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO GATEWAY GREEN COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds The Palm Beach Police and Fire Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds The Westminster Schools Inc ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY LEAD ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY RIZZO FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL EMPOWERMENT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds PARADISE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR AIDS RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds HOWARD A AND JUDITH K TULLMAN FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE HOSPICE FOUNDATION OF MARTIN & ST LUCIE INC ↗
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 · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Michael and Jacqueline Ferro 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Global Empowerment Mission Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Michael and Jacqueline Ferro Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Michael and Jacqueline Ferro 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.