· Private foundation
Virginia Lee Shirley Private 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 68% of VIRGINIA LEE SHIRLEY PRIVATE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $328k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $105k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAN DO CANINES | $55,000 |
| RAVINIA | $50,000 |
| SOUTH SUBURBAN HUMANE SOCIETY | $30,000 |
| ST MARY'S SCHOOL AND CATHOLIC CHURCH | $30,000 |
| DUKE LAW SCHOOL ANNUAL FUND | $25,000 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| ST PETER'S CATHOLIC CHURCH | $25,000 |
| ABRAHAM LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| DEAF UNITY - UNITED ADVOCATES AGAINST VIOLENCE | $25,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $20,000 |
| BISHOP MCNAMARA CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| HADLEY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND | $12,500 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS - CHICAGO | $10,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE H FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $37k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 59% 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 +51% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down; 13 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $142k 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
- CDCAN DO CANINES9× · 2017–2025 · $440k · revenue +61%
- CUCOLGATE UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $185k · revenue +80%
- SSSOUTH SUBURBAN HUMANE SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $137k · revenue +92%
Funded once
- TNTHE NORA PROJECTone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue -28%
- RURUSH UNIVERSITY - HEARING RESEARCHone grant, 2019 · $10k
- GHGIANNAS HOUSE PREGNANCY RESOURCE CENTERone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +18%
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 GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
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.
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 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.
Chicago canine rescue foundation finds permanent homes for homeless dogs in our community with a specific emphasis on assisting the most vulnerable animals, who without our help, would have no other options. while in our care, they are…
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…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The Network is a group of 40+ member organizations dedicated to improving the lives of those impacted by gender-based violence through education, public policy and advocacy, and connecting community members with direct service providers.…
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.
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.
The aids foundation of chicago mobilizes communities to create equity and justice for people living with and vulnerable to hiv and related chronic disease.
To give members the ability to control their financial destiny by providing members with the means to satisfy their needs for financial services in a comfortable family-like environment. in doing so, the credit union strives to maintain…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mentor Teacher Brother 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 38 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 78 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 CAN DO CANINES ↗
- Who funds COLGATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH SUBURBAN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CIVIC LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO THEATRE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds THE H FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds DEAF UNITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE KALO FOUNDATION OF PARK RIDGE ↗
- Who funds GS DONOR ADVISED PHILANTHROPY FUND FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Mentor Teacher Brother INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY ACTION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOOR REPERTORY COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE WAY BACK INN INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
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 · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · AbbVie Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving 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 Virginia Lee Shirley Private 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 Virginia Lee Shirley Private Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Virginia Lee Shirley Private 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.