Grantmakers › Illinois

Pert Foundation

Chicago, IL · EIN 81-0585993. Reported 52 grants totalling $327.6M to 30 organizations across tax years 2020-2023, on Form 990 Schedule I.

Does this grantmaker accept applications?

Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.

Three things in the filing do bear on it:

1. What kind of organization it is. For Pert Foundation, the IRS classifies it as a private grantmaking foundation (NTEE T20).
2. How spread out its giving is. 30 distinct organizations, with 99% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is extreme concentration. A grantmaker sending three quarters of its money to one organization is in practice a support fund for that organization, whatever its classification says, and an unsolicited request is very unlikely to go anywhere.
3. How much its list changes. 72% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 1 year-to-year transition. That is well above the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% private foundations manage. This list is close to settled, so a newcomer has to displace someone rather than fill a gap.

How big are its grants?

The median reported grant is $25,000. Half of what it reported fell between $20,000 and $50,000; the smallest was $10,000 and the largest $318.0M. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.

Every organization it funded

This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.

21 of 30 (70%) received money in more than one year over the 3 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.

• The Chicago Community Foundation $318.0M · 2023
  General support for programs, operations and other charitable purposes
• The Chicago Community Trust $1,250,000 · 2020
  Support general Operations and support for the Unity Fund for basic human needs.
• Lake County Community Foundation $425,000 · 2021
  In support of capacity building and development.
• Crossroads Fund $300,000 · 2021
  In support of the Chicago Racial Justice Pooled Fund to address historic disinvestment in black communities and also provide support for housing, education, health, and workers' justice in black communities.
• Tides Foundation $300,000 · 2021
  To build sustainability and impactful collective power by deepening collaboration techniques for 23 Chicago-based Muslim-led charitable organizations.
• The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois $20,000 · 2021
  In support of the Call Me MISTER Initiative at the UIC College of Education.

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 26 of 30 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.

Giving by year

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.

Where its money goes

100% of its giving went to organizations in Illinois. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.

Down to the city

Funders that support the same organizations

These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

How to approach this grantmaker

1. Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $25,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Illinois.
4. Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.

Related guides

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Pert Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2020-2023). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.

On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 1 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 0 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.

Address of record on the latest return: 33 S State Street 750, Chicago, IL, 60603.

EIN 81-0585993 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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