· Private foundation
Zell 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $278k
- $50k–250k20 grants · $2.7M
- $250k+21 grants · $62M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY-KELLOGG | $25,000,000 |
| ROCHELLE ZELL JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $8,300,000 |
| CAMP RAMAH IN WISCONSIN ENDOWMENT CORP | $3,000,000 |
| ZELL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOUNDATION | $2,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $2,000,000 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $1,500,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC (FIRE) | $1,350,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $1,340,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $1,250,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND | $1,000,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF REICHMAN UNIVERSITY (FKA-IDC) | $1,000,000 |
| START EARLY | $1,000,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $700,000 |
| STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY | $500,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +34% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
74 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2024, 31 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $28M 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
- UOUniversity of Michigan5× · 2020–2024 · $86M · revenue +139% · 57% of their budget
- RZROCHELLE ZELL JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL5× · 2020–2024 · $22M · revenue +0%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra5× · 2020–2024 · $20M · revenue +71%
Funded once
- FFFOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC (AKA FIRE)one grant, 2022 · $1.4M
- LPLINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCYone grant, 2022 · $1.3M · revenue -67% · 50% of their budget
- SESTART EARLY (FKA OUNCE OF PREVENTION)one grant, 2022 · $1.1M
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
The chicago theatre group is committed to producing both classic and contemporary works giving full voice to a wide range of artists and visions. by dedicating itself to three guiding principles - quality, equity, and community - the…
The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University ("The Auditorium"), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, is committed to presenting the finest in international, cultural, community and educational programming to Chicago and to the…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
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 cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
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.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Music Institute of Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Zell Entrepreneurship Foundation. 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 39 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.
90 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. 90 of the 136 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 University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds BERNARD ZELL ANSHE EMET DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ROCHELLE ZELL JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds ZELL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds Camp Ramah in Wisconsin Endowment Corp ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IMENTOR INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ChiArts Foundation ↗
- Who funds TEACH FOR ALL INC ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF REICHMAN UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG CHICAGO AUTHORS ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE POINT MAGAZINE ↗
- Who funds THE BOULDER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
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: Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Irving Harris Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Circle of Service Foundation · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Julian Family Foundation · The Bluhm Family Foundation · The Negaunee 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 Zell 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Sharsheret Inc — 4% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Zell Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Zell Family 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.