· Private foundation
Thomas W Dower 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 $10k63 grants · $228k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $165k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| STEPPENWOLF THEATER COMPANY | $25,000 |
| DE LASALLE INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| ST RITA HIGH SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| ST COLETTA OF WISCONSIN | $20,000 |
| ST MALACHY SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| UNIVVERSITY OF ST MARY OF THE LAKE SEMINARY | $10,000 |
| ANDERSON RANCH ART CENTER | $10,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS | $10,000 |
| IRISH GEORGIAN SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| ST JEROME SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| TRILOGY INC | $9,000 |
| ST PETER'S CHURCH | $9,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $7,500 |
| OX BOW SCHOOL OF ART INSTITUTE | $7,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $50k) 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.
119 repeat relationships — 67 still active in FY2025, 52 since wound down; 5 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- STSTEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY9× · 2017–2025 · $285k · revenue +59%
ST COLETTA OF WISCONSIN INC9× · 2017–2025 · $100k · revenue +91%- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO3× · 2019–2021 · $75k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- SOSISTERS OF ST FRANCIS OF ASSISIone grant, 2018 · $20k
- DLDE LASALLE HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $20k
- SOSISTERS OF MERCYone grant, 2018 · $15k
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.
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 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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Steadfast in jesus christ as revealed in the holy scriptures, concordia university chicago promotes academic rigor in its liberal arts and professional programs; grounds students in objective truth, integrity, and excellence; and practices…
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
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…
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
To cultivate a growing international culture of listening.
The athenaeum center for thought and culture (actc) will promote and support the fine arts, cultural programming, and spiritual development for catholics and the general public in chicago, illinois. actc will operate from a historic…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Shore Senior Center and the most unlike its peers is Operation Helmet Inc. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 164 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 STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds ST COLETTA OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds Piven Theatre Workshop ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds BRAIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRILOGY INC ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds ST PATRICK'S RESIDENCE ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MINNEAPOLIS SOCIETY OF FINE ARTS DBA MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE BLAKE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS CLUB FOR CATHOLIC WOMEN ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds THE IRISH GEORGIAN SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Safer Foundation ↗
- Who funds Creighton University ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds SALUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Humanities Festival ↗
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 · Helen V Brach Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Charles H and Beverly E Shaw Foundation · Carol Bernick Family Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · The Canning Foundation · Big Shoulders Fund
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 Thomas W Dower 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.
- Star Community Inc — 2% 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.