· Public charity
The Morton Arboretum
To collect, study, display, and conserve trees and other plants from around the world to inspire learning, foster enjoyment, benefit communities, encourage action, and enhance the environment.
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.
The 48 grants below total $1,141,397 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,465,749 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $324,352 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k37 grants · $777k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $325k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF CHICAGO | $75,000 |
| ROSELLE PARK DISTRICT | $73,443 |
| CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY | $70,494 |
| FOREST PRESERVE DISTRICT OF COOK COUNTY | $55,000 |
| OPENLANDS | $51,414 |
| HAWTHORN WOODS | $40,000 |
| VILLAGE OF WESTCHESTER | $40,000 |
| CITY OF NAPERVILLE | $30,000 |
| BELVIDERE TOWNSHIP PARK DISTRICT | $27,933 |
| VILLAGE OF BECKEMEYER | $27,331 |
| VILLAGE OF WESTERN SPRINGS | $25,000 |
| VILLAGE OF GLENDALE HEIGHTS | $25,000 |
| CITY OF WEST CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| VILLAGE OF MOKENA | $25,000 |
| VILLAGE OF BANNOCKBURN | $25,000 |
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 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 61% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $324k on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 3 regions, $169k to organizations and $155k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: GLOBAL TREE CONSERVATION RESEARCH SUPPORT
Stated purpose: GLOBAL TREE CONSERVATION RESEARCH SUPPORT
Stated purpose: CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP · GLOBAL TREE CONSERVATION RESEARCH SUPPORT
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of The Morton Arboretum’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 77% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 75% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +85% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 34 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, 33% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $769k 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
- OOPENLANDS6× · 2017–2024 · $278k · revenue +166%
- TATHE ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDEN INC4× · 2021–2024 · $179k · revenue +70%
- MBMONTGOMERY BOTANICAL CENTER3× · 2021–2023 · $100k · revenue +78%
Funded once
- CPCHICAGO PARK DISTRICTone grant, 2023 · $100k
- TLTHE LAKE COUNTRY FOREST PRESERVE DISTRICTone grant, 2022 · $60k
- KCKendall County Forest Preserve Districtone grant, 2022 · $50k
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.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
We harness the power of plants for humankind and share the joy and beauty of tropical gardening with everyone. fairchild tropical botanic garden is a museum of tropical plants within a world famous, 83-acre designed landscape. it was…
To enrich life by perpetuating tropical plants, ecosystems and cultural heritage through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education.
The mission of heartlands conservancy is to empower and colaborate with the people of southern illinois to advance and protect the health of our distinctive communities and nationally significant natural and cultural resources.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The organization's primary mission is conserving land where people and nature can thrive by creating green corridors linking existing public lands using conservation easments and outright purchase.
Rancho santa ana botanic gardens promotes botany, conservation, and horticulture to inspire, inform and educate the public and scientific community about california's native flora. the garden is devoted to the collection, cultivation,…
The mission of denver botanic gardens is to connect people with plants, especially plants from the rocky mountain region and similar regions around the world, providing delight and enlightenment to everyone.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Montgomery Botanical Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 35 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 15% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 149 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 OPENLANDS ↗
- Who funds THE ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY BOTANICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds BOTANIC GARDENS CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL US INC ↗
- Who funds THE LAND CONSERVANCY OF MCHENRY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN PLACE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE FOREST PRESERVE DISTRICT OF DUPAGE COUNTY ↗
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: Openlands · Metropolitan Mayors Caucus · Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation · Ageoptions Inc (Fka Suburban Area Agency on Aging) · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Forefront · Trees Forever Inc · The Experimental Station · Greater Chicago Food Depository · The Dupage Community Foundation · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc
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 Morton Arboretum 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.
- Montgomery Botanical Center — 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.