· Public charity
Wagner Descendant's Foundation
The foundation is organized to foster, promote, support, develop, and maintain the broad, charitable, educational or religious purpose or functions as authorized by the charter of the jewish federation of metropolitan chicago and the by-laws of the foundation.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $70,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% of your 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.
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.
5 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO4× · 2021–2025 · $395k · revenue +33%
- FOFRIENDS OF ELNET3× · 2021–2023 · $120k · revenue +47%
- IEISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE3× · 2021–2023 · $65k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- AIAMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue -15%
- FFFoundation for the Defense of Democracies Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +77%
- PUPRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +112%
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 jewish electorate institute (jei) is an independent, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that surveys, interprets, reports, and educates the public about the perspectives, voting behaviors, and motivations of the american jewish…
The jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
Support the hebrew univ. of jerusalem, israel's foremost center of higher edu. & research.
The israel institute, inc. (the institute) enhances knowledge about modern israel by ensuring that more students have access to courses about israel during their time on campus.
The organization seeks to reinforce the foundations of israel as a jewish and democratic state. it acts to promote programs to educate the israeli public on the importance of both values and to demonstrate how each contributes to and…
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
We fundraise in the u.s. to support, and raise awareness of, bar-ilan university in israel.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Israel Education Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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.
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 JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ELNET ↗
- Who funds ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Inc ↗
- Who funds Center for Entrepreneurial Jewish Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Wagner Descendant's 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.
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How do I get to Wagner Descendant's Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Wagner Descendant's 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.