· Private foundation
The Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust named its own grantees at scale: 22 organizations, $326k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k30 grants · $99k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $47k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $180k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LEARN CHARTER SCHOOL NETWORK | $125,000 |
| SHORE COMMUNITY SERVICES | $55,100 |
| MARCO ISLAND ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| NC MUSEUM OF ART FOUNDATION | $16,666 |
| UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE | $10,000 |
| MUSIC THEATRE WORKS | $7,500 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF CHICAGO | $7,500 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $5,000 |
| GUADALUPE CENTER | $5,000 |
| COOK CO HEALTH FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $5,000 |
| BONITA SPRINGS YMCA | $5,000 |
| PROJECT ZAWADI | $5,000 |
| CATHEDRAL OF THE MADELINE | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–21, $77k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +32% since the first grant, against -12% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2021, 0 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2021, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- LELawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School2× · 2020–2021 · $164k · revenue +35%
- MIMARCO ISLAND ACADEMY A PUBLIC CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL2× · 2020–2021 · $41k · revenue +7%
NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART FOUNDATION2× · 2020–2021 · $33k · revenue +159%
Funded once
- HOHANDS ON PERUgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue +269%
- MYMidwest Young Artistsone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue +7%
- YEYWCA EvanstonNorth Shoreone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue -14%
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 Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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 ODeans for Impact supports educator-preparation programs to bring the science of learning into teaching practice; partners with policymakers to ensure pathways into teaching are accessible, practice-based, and…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Hands On Peru. 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 32 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% 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 17% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 45 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds SHORE COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MARCO ISLAND ACADEMY A PUBLIC CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ↗
- Who funds Music Theatre Works Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ZAWADI INC ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe Center Inc ↗
- Who funds CAFE OF LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds WARREN BILLY CHERRY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds The Hap Foundation Inc (F/K/A Journeycare Foundation) ↗
- Who funds SOLIDARITY BRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds CANCER FOR COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH JOB CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds HANDS ON PERU ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GANNON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Midwest Young Artists ↗
- Who funds YWCA EvanstonNorth Shore ↗
- Who funds SRCC SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Run ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION 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 · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Dr Scholl Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Bank of America Charitable 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 Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust 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.
- University of Delaware — 30% of income from government
- Guadalupe Center 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 Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to The Richard and Margaret Romano Charitable Trust 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.