· Private foundation
The Polsky 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
- Under $10k15 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $240k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $500k
- $250k+4 grants · $7.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BRCA Research and Cure Alliance | $2,293,698 |
| Northwestern Memorial Foundation | $2,006,992 |
| University of Chicago 2016 | $1,704,101 |
| Our Home Ukraine | $968,283 |
| Voice Health Institute | $200,000 |
| White Stork | $150,000 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | $50,000 |
| St Nicholas UK Catholic School | $50,000 |
| The Museum of Contemporary Art | $50,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club of Chicago | $31,568 |
| Chicago Association of Veterans of WWII | $27,801 |
| Latin School of Chicago | $25,000 |
| Illinois Holocaust Museum | $25,000 |
| VetVoice Foundation | $20,000 |
| Chicago Media Project | $18,452 |
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 (FY22–23, $107k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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 +23% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 20 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, 34% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.1M 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
University of Chicago3× · 2017–2021 · $5.5M · revenue +56%- VHVOICE HEALTH INSTITUTE4× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +22% · 97% of their budget
THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION2× · 2020–2022 · $1000k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- PMPOLISH MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART INCone grant, 2022 · $190k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $175k
Save The Children Federation Incone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -13%
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.
To engage in scientific research and educational activities throughout the world on behalf of and in conjunction with the university of chicago.
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
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.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Architecture Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Brca Research and Cure Alliance. 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 25 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 23% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 92 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds BRCA Research and Cure Alliance ↗
- Who funds VOICE HEALTH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds White Stork - United States Ltd ↗
- Who funds THE LATIN SCHOOL OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds YAHAD- IN UNUM MID-AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS ↗
- Who funds THIS CHILD HERE INC ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood of Illinois ↗
- Who funds Ukrainian Resistance Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds VET VOICE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University Inc ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
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 · The Selfreliance Foundation · The Heritage Foundation of First Security Federal Savings Bank Inc · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Circle of Service Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation · Kovler Family Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Ncrc Community Development Fund 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 Polsky 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% 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.