· Private foundation
The Trott Family Foundation
Its FY2021 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 FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k3 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $112k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $350k
- $250k+7 grants · $34M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TROTT FAMILY PHILANTHROPIES INC | $25,176,597 |
| TROTT FAMILY PHILANTHROPIES INC | $4,532,740 |
| rootED Alliance Inc | $1,250,000 |
| Ohio State University | $1,000,000 |
| rootED Alliance Inc | $800,000 |
| SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF ST LOUIS | $476,700 |
| Center for Strategic International Studie | $275,000 |
| Cleveland Clinic Foundation | $200,000 |
| Stand Together Trust | $50,000 |
| Caron Treatment Centers | $50,000 |
| North Shore Country Day School | $50,000 |
| Horatio Alger Association | $25,000 |
| The Nets Foundation | $25,000 |
| University of Chicago | $16,000 |
| UNICEF | $15,000 |
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 (FY18–20, $101k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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 +39% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2021, 19 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 12% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30M 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 Chicago5× · 2017–2021 · $7.1M · revenue +56%- RAROOTED ALLIANCE INC4× · 2018–2021 · $5.8M · revenue +614% · 46% of their budget
CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION2× · 2018–2020 · $1.8M · revenue +113%
Funded once
- SPSAFE PROJECT USone grant, 2019 · $500k
- STSTOP THE ADDICTION FATALITY EPIDEMIC (SAFE) PROJECT USgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $500k · revenue +52% · 27% of their budget
- PPROJECTHANDUPone grant, 2019 · $275k · revenue -37%
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 institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc 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.
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 35 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 11% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
48 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. 48 of the 67 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 TROTT FAMILY PHILANTHROPIES INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ROOTED ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds HORATIO ALGER ASSN OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds THE SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds The ONE Campaign ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds STOP THE ADDICTION FATALITY EPIDEMIC (SAFE) PROJECT US ↗
- Who funds PROJECTHANDUP ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds Sundance Institute ↗
- Who funds TORY BURCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DKMS ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds UNION R-XI SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Children's Museum ↗
- Who funds PANDA CARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
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: Trott Family Philanthropies Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · John D and Alexandra Nichols Family Foundation · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · Tisbest Philanthropy · Dr Scholl Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Baird 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 Trott Family 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 Trott Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Trott Family 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.