· Private foundation
Zuckerman 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k32 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ERIKSON INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| NATIONAL PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND | $15,000 |
| MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| NORTH SUBURBAN SYNAGOGUE BETH EL | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $10,000 |
| RETT SYNDROME RESEARCH TRUST | $10,000 |
| FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES | $10,000 |
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL | $5,000 |
| SUSAN SPECTOR FUND | $5,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $5,000 |
| US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| WTTW CHANNEL 11 | $4,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $93k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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 +24% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 1 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500 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 CHICAGO8× · 2017–2024 · $320k · revenue +13%
- EIErikson Institute8× · 2017–2024 · $200k · revenue +5%
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE8× · 2017–2024 · $80k · revenue +116%
Funded once
- EPEVANSTON POLICE & FIRE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $5k
- WSWOLCOTT SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +35%
- HAHEARTLAND ALLIANCEone grant, 2017 · $3k
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.
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…
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 adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Brightfocus foundation funds exceptional research worldwide to defeat alzheimer's disease, macular degeneration, and glaucoma and provides expert information on these heartbreaking diseases. please refer to schedule o for a complete…
The hugo w. moser research institute at kennedy krieger, inc. (the "research institute") is an internationally recognized research facility finding answers to problems and injuries that affect a child's developing brain. researchers have…
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Ann & robert h. lurie children's hospital of chicago is dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a…
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
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.
The norton & elaine sarnoff center for jewish genetics (the center) is an educational resource for hereditary cancers and jewish genetic disorders. working closely with clergy, health care professionals, support organizations and dedicated…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. 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 42 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 65 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 JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds RETT SYNDROME RESEARCH TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SHALVA INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SNOW CITY ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GIFT OF LIFE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH HAVEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WOLCOTT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds FAMILY FOCUS LEGACY ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
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 · Kovler Family Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Zuckerman 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.
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 Zuckerman Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Zuckerman 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.