· Private foundation
The Robert a and Shirley J Jones 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $102k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $35k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Connections for the Homeless | $20,000 |
| First Presbyterian Church | $15,000 |
| National Park Foundation | $9,000 |
| Community Sharing Program | $8,000 |
| Care House of Oakland County | $7,500 |
| Samaritans Purse | $6,850 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $6,000 |
| Gleaners Food Bank | $5,000 |
| Womens Resource Center of NMI | $5,000 |
| Refugee One | $5,000 |
| Naples Zoo | $5,000 |
| Direct Relief | $5,000 |
| Ravinia Festival | $5,000 |
| Sarahs Circle | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $33k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +46% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- CFCONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC5× · 2021–2025 · $90k · revenue +14%
- UOUniversity of Michigan4× · 2017–2020 · $55k · revenue +202%
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $42k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +73%
THE HEAT AND WARMTH FUNDone grant, 2024 · $6k · revenue 0%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INCone grant, 2017 · $6k · revenue +12%
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.
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…
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
The mission of health care without harm (hcwh) is to transform health care worldwide so that it reduces its environmental footprint, becomes a community anchor for sustainability and a leader in the global movement for environmental health…
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
To make kids better today and healthier tomorrow.
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…
The aids foundation of chicago mobilizes communities to create equity and justice for people living with and vulnerable to hiv and related chronic disease.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 71 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 CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND ALLIANCE HEALTH ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds CAREHOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAPLES ZOO INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds ST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHADTOUGH DEFEAT DIPG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REFUGEEONE ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Culinary Care ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds Mudlark Theater Company NFP ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds THE HEAT AND WARMTH FUND ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA 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: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · National Philanthropic Trust · Flagstar Foundation Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Dte Energy Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust
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 Robert a and Shirley J Jones 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Robert a and Shirley J Jones Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert a and Shirley J Jones 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.