· Private foundation
The Regenstein 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 $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $333k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $897k
- $250k+4 grants · $3.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $1,000,000 |
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDREN'S | $1,000,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $800,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| GULFSHORE PLAYHOUSE | $150,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $112,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $100,000 |
| ANN & ROBERT H LURIE CHILDREN'S | $70,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $60,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS | $55,000 |
| NCH HEALTHCARE | $50,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FEDERATION OF | $50,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $50,000 |
| NAPLES ZOO | $50,000 |
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, $113k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% 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.
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 +38% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 9 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY5× · 2020–2024 · $4.3M · revenue +27%
- RURush University Medical Center5× · 2020–2024 · $4.2M · revenue +30%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago5× · 2020–2024 · $3.8M · revenue +27%
Funded once
- JUJEWISH UNITED FERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGOone grant, 2023 · $50k
- CNConservation Nationone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue -87%
- FOFriends of Catherine and Channel Lakesone grant, 2023 · $30k · revenue -64%
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 Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
To enrich life by perpetuating tropical plants, ecosystems and cultural heritage through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education.
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
The Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry (the Museum), a 501(c)(3) corporation, is the largest science museum in the Western hemisphere and home to thousands of artifacts. For 90 years, the Museum has been a premier…
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
The mission of the lincoln park conservancy is to preserve and enhance the inspiring beauty of chicago's largest and most visited park for current and future generations. we believe that beauty matters. that it has the transformative power…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Discovery World educates, motivates,mobilizes and inspires the innovators and entrepreneurs of the 21st century. We connect innovation, science, and technology with exploration, environment, and our Great Lakes freshwater resources through…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 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 54 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 48 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 LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GULFSHORE PLAYHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVANCY OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds NCH HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds NAPLES ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds EVANSTON REBUILDING WAREHOUSE ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Arc of Greater New Orleans ↗
- Who funds Conservation Nation ↗
- Who funds Friends of Catherine and Channel Lakes ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds VANDERCOOK COLLEGE OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds THE SERVICE CLUB OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT 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 · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Regenstein 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.
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Shelter for Abused Women & Children Inc — 2% of income from government
- Gulfshore Playhouse Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 Regenstein Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Regenstein 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.