How much does The Neisser Family Foundation give?

The Neisser Family Foundation reported 16 grants totaling $260,960 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 10 and 28 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Neisser Family Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (78%), Education (18%), Health (0%).

Who are The Neisser Family Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Fulcrum Point New Music Project ($1.1M), Erikson Institute ($300k), Museum of Contemporary Art ($283k).

Does The Neisser Family Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 8% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Neisser Family 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 Neisser Family Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Orange County Community Foundation, Ibm International Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust.

Where is The Neisser Family Foundation based?

The Neisser Family Foundation is based in IL.

The Neisser Family Foundation

The Neisser Family Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Neisser Family 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.

$261k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$92k

Largest

01What it funds

0194% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$2.2MEducation$495kHealth$12kSocial Science$3kReligion$2kCivil Rights$2kHousing & Shelter$1kEnvironment$750Other$0

02FY2025 · 16 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k5 grants · $18k
$10k–50k10 grants · $151k
$50k–250k1 grant · $92k

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$59k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
FULCRUM POINT NEW MUSIC PROJECT	$92,160
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO	$26,000
ERICKSON INSTITUTE	$25,000
FRANCIS W PARKER SCHOOL	$20,000
DESIGN MUSEUM OF CHICAGO	$20,000
WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC	$10,000
CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE CENTER	$10,000
MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC	$10,000
SNOW CITY ARTS	$10,000
SKIDMORE COLLEGE	$10,000
NPR	$10,000
ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECH	$5,000
PLANNED PARENDHOOD OF ILLINOIS	$5,000
SOCIETY FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO)	$5,000
MOADON KOL CHADASH	$1,800

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 (FY17–19, $24k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 96% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-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.

96%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$2.6M · 29 repeat orgs$119k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +32% since the first grant, against +18% for those funded once.

29 repeat relationships: 11 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$2.6M

$97k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+32%

+18%

Still filing today

83%

59%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureEducationHealthHuman ServicesCivil RightsSocial ScienceOther

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

EI
Erikson Institute
9× · 2017–2025 · $300k · revenue +5%
MO
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
8× · 2017–2024 · $283k · revenue +0%
TA
THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
7× · 2017–2025 · $180k · revenue +45%

Funded once

IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2018 · $50k
OC
ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
one grant, 2022 · $13k · revenue -57%
IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2020 · $10k

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.

Columbia College Chicago

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

Education

Museum of Arts and Design

To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.

Arts & Culture

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Lyric Opera of Chicago

We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…

Arts & Culture

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

The museum of contemporary art san diego invites all audiences to experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art.

Arts & Culture

The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection (the "Collection") operates an internationally recognized art museum and library program for the inspiration and enjoyment of the public and for the advancement of the study of fine arts and kindred subjects.

—

Chicago Opera Theater

Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.

Arts & Culture

California Institute of Contemporary Art

—

Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University Inc

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…

Arts & Culture

Music Institute of Chicago

The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.

Arts & Culture

California College of the Arts

California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…

Education

New York School of Interior Design

New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Museum of Contemporary Art; the most unlike its peers is Fulcrum Point New Music Project. 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

49 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. 49 of the 68 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)

49/49

Grantees still filing

36/49

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Arts & Culture$1,902,794Education$678,775Other$151,650Human Services$23,500Health$6,750Social Science$3,000Civil Rights$1,895

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.

Orange County Community FoundationCA18.7× affinity7 shared granteesties to 10 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Orange County Community Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · California Community Foundation · Huang Family Foundation · Spenuzza-Velastegui Family Foundation · Jack & Sandra Guthman Fdn · The Millstream Fund Inc · Nancy and Geoffrey Stack Family Foundation · Macgillivray Family Foundation · The William Gillespie 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 Neisser Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Neisser Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

12report 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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Neisser Family Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Neisser 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.

Play a game based on Neisser Family’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