· Private foundation
The Robert Thomas Bobins 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k67 grants · $105k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $258k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $172k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO | $66,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO | $56,000 |
| ERIKSON INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS | $30,000 |
| FIELD MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| ANSHE EMET SYNAGOGUE | $29,650 |
| NAVY PIER INC | $25,000 |
| BRAIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| WTTW | $18,700 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $17,400 |
| YU TORAH MITZION KOLLEL OF CHICAGO | $15,000 |
| UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM | $15,000 |
| ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART | $12,500 |
| DEPAUL UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $78k) 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 +27% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
135 repeat relationships — 65 still active in FY2024, 70 since wound down; 15 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $32k 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
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO6× · 2019–2024 · $305k · revenue +23%
- NPNAVY PIER INC5× · 2019–2024 · $226k · revenue +27%
- EIErikson Institute5× · 2019–2024 · $226k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- CPChicago Parks Golf Allianceone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue -91%
- TCTHE CHICAGO CLUB PRESERVATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -95%
- CKCONGREGATION KOL EMETHone grant, 2020 · $10k
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 public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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…
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.
The Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
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…
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
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.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids First Chicago for Education and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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 39 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
166 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. 166 of the 235 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NAVY PIER INC ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds BRAIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University Inc ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds The Resurrection Project ↗
- Who funds Red Sweater Project ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Chicago Parks Golf Alliance ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN - CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds Goldie B Wolfe Miller Women Leaders in Real Estate Initiative ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
- Who funds MARINE CORPS SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
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 · Circle of Service Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Lavin Family Foundation · The Sidley Austin Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago 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 Robert Thomas Bobins 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.
- Boston Medical Center Corporation — 23% of income from government
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Sharsheret Inc — 4% 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 Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert Thomas Bobins 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.