· Private foundation
125 Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k3 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $450k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES | $150,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO YOUTH CENTERS | $100,000 |
| WHITE STORK - UNITED STATES LTD | $50,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS | $50,000 |
| CHURCH WORLD SERVICE INC | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| CHICAGO BIBLE SOCIETY | $10,000 |
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, $40k) 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 +38% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY6× · 2020–2025 · $310k · revenue +17%- HFHOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES3× · 2020–2025 · $180k · revenue +48%
University of Illinois Foundation4× · 2020–2025 · $155k · revenue +74%
Funded once
- OWOPERATION WHITE STORKone grant, 2022 · $150k
- CICHICAGOLAND IMMIGRANT WELCOME NETWORKone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +2%
- OWOPERATION WHITE STORK - UNITED STATES LTDone grant, 2024 · $100k
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 Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
The Foodbank's mission is to provide food, and develop awareness of and creative solutions for food insecurity. Annually, the Foodbank distributes approximately 9.5 million pounds of food to 130 food pantries, soup kitchens, children's…
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
Serving recently arrived migrants and asylum seekers in the Chicagoland area and is committed to upholding the dignity and human rights of immigrants.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
To raise and distribute funds, goods, food, and assistance to the poverty-stricken in the jewish community.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago's purpose is to partner with mission-driven people and organizations across Cook and Lake counties and to witness a message of mercy and hope to a world in need through service.
Executive Service Corps is the premier nonprofit consultancy that engages highly skilled professionals who use their experience and expertise to provide nonprofits with the consulting services they need to be successful. Our vision is to…
i58 Global is a Christian ministry dedicated to recruiting, sending and organizing relief workers to provide aid and share hope to refugees in various European countries.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Youth Centers and the most unlike its peers is Jeffrey Pride Foundation Inc. 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 33 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 38 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 GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Youth Centers ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds White Stork - United States Ltd ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGOLAND IMMIGRANT WELCOME NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL EMPOWERMENT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds ONE COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FELLOWSHIP ↗
- Who funds HELP OF BEAUFORT ↗
- Who funds Community Meal ↗
- Who funds THE GLOBAL ORPHAN PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN LIFE COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHURCH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds JEFFREY PRIDE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INGAGE UNLIMITED ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL & EASTERN NC INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Bible Society ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO ASSOCIATION OF VETERANS OF WORLD ↗
- Who funds Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center NFP ↗
- Who funds Team Bright Side Inc ↗
- Who funds ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Lions Clubs International Foundation ↗
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 Christopher Family Foundation · Greater Chicago Food Depository · The Chicago Community Trust · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · AbbVie Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc
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 125 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.
- Global Empowerment Mission Inc — 0% 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 125 Foundation?
Find your warmest path to 125 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.