· Private foundation
Wedner Family 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
60% of Wedner Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 6 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Wedner Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $107k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k3 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $35k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY | $60,000 |
| FREEDOM HOUSE | $25,000 |
| MI VECINO INC | $10,000 |
| TEMPLE JUDEA | $5,000 |
| THE ASPEN INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| THE FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $17k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 70% 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.
13 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2021, 10 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
- WUWESLEYAN UNIVERSITY4× · 2019–2022 · $210k · revenue +45%
- FHFREEDOM HOUSE2× · 2020–2021 · $40k · revenue +37%
University of Chicago3× · 2017–2024 · $37k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $25k
- TCTRUMAN CENTERone grant, 2018 · $15k
- CRCRISTO REY ST MARTINone grant, 2019 · $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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
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…
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.
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
To create a nation where everyone enjoys a fair share of our collective prosperity.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Go Green Winnetka. 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 26 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 53 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM HOUSE ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds MI VECINO INC ↗
- Who funds Spark Climate Solutions ↗
- Who funds TRUMAN NATIONAL SECURITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN CLIMATE INNOVATIONS ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL REDISTRICTING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIFT OF ADOPTION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE CIVIC FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PSYCHOANALYTIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Vocel Viewing our Children as Emerging Leaders ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT PUBLIC BROADCASTING INC ↗
- Who funds Camp Kesem National ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES ↗
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 · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Baird Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Wedner 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% of income from government
- Wesleyan University — 1% 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.