· Private foundation
William and Wilma Dooley Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k21 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $69k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SMILE TRAIN | $17,000 |
| WETLANDS INITIATIVE | $15,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH | $14,850 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $12,000 |
| CINCINNATI CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $8,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS | $1,500 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $1,000 |
| WRITERS THEATRE | $1,000 |
| LITTLE BROS-FRIENDS of the ELDERLY | $1,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–22, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +26% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2022, 7 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
SMILE TRAIN INC4× · 2019–2022 · $50k · revenue +26%- TWTHE WETLANDS INITIATIVE4× · 2019–2022 · $45k · revenue +71%
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC4× · 2019–2022 · $41k · revenue +79%
Funded once
- SMST MARGARET MARY PARISHone grant, 2019 · $250
- MSMERIT SCHOOL OF MUSICone grant, 2019 · $250 · revenue +19%
- AVAMERICA'S VETDOGS THE VETERANS K-9 CORPS INCone grant, 2019 · $250 · revenue +21%
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 Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
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…
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 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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
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…
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
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.
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Marquette University. 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 13% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 42 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 SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FACIAL PAIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds GILDA'S CLUB CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE GREEN BAY TRAIL ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds AMERICA'S VETDOGS THE VETERANS K-9 CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds MARINES' MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Honor Flight Chicago Corp ↗
- Who funds ANKENY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
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 · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 William and Wilma Dooley 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 William and Wilma Dooley Foundation?
Find your warmest path to William and Wilma Dooley 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.