· Private foundation
The Negaunee 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k15 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k34 grants · $628k
- $50k–250k46 grants · $4.5M
- $250k+19 grants · $29M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $6,150,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $4,550,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $2,860,000 |
| IL SAINT ANDREW SOCIETY | $2,500,000 |
| THE COLBURN SCHOOL | $2,050,000 |
| WTTW - NETWORK CHICAGO | $1,650,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $1,500,000 |
| OPENLANDS | $1,060,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $1,000,000 |
| MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $1,000,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $750,000 |
| Music of the Baroque | $650,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $550,000 |
| ANTIOCH COLLEGE | $500,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST | $400,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $7.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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 +32% for the ones you funded once.
99 repeat relationships — 87 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 10 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.4M 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
- FMFIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY5× · 2020–2024 · $19M · revenue +112%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra5× · 2020–2024 · $15M · revenue +71%
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY5× · 2020–2024 · $14M · revenue +27%
Funded once
- CSColburn School of the Performing Arone grant, 2020 · $400k
- OSOISTRAKH SYMPHONY OF CHICAGOone grant, 2020 · $100k
- STSTEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +97%
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.
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.
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…
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
Chicago a cappella advances the art and appreciation of ensemble singing. the organization produces an annual series of concerts in the greater chicago area, produces educational outreach programs, creates studio recordings as well as live…
To promote public appreciation, understanding and support of the humanities through festivals and educational programs.
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Music Institute of Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Edinburgh International Festival Usa Inc. 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 49 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
76 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. 76 of the 123 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 FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE ILLINOIS SAINT ANDREW SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE COLBURN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds OPENLANDS ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds TREEPEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds ANTIOCH COLLEGE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds VANDERCOOK COLLEGE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds The Chicago Community Trust ↗
- Who funds Lake Forest College ↗
- Who funds THE JOFFREY BALLET ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds The People's Music School ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR OXFORD INC ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM ↗
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 · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Dr Scholl Foundation · John R Halligan Charitable Fund · Zell Family Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Elizabeth F Cheney Foundation · The Irving Harris Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · AbbVie 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 Negaunee 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.