How much did A Better Chicago grant in FY2024?

Education$11MYouth Development$3.0MHuman Services$2.9MCommunity Improvement$2.0MHealth$955kPhilanthropy$710kArts & Culture$375kRecreation & Sports$175kInternational$157kOther$2.1M

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2020

supportivebirthbooksbernie's bookbook bankchildren'sdisrupt

2021

teachingexperiencing homelessness

2022

professionalfreeemotionalexperiencing homelessnessdiversesocialchild

2023

professionalemotionalsocialteachingexperiencing homelessness

2024

parentfreediverseemotionalexperiencing homelessness

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 25 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

$10k–50k3 grants · $45k
$50k–250k18 grants · $2.4M
$250k+4 grants · $1.1M

$125,000

Median grant

States reached

$21M

Total assets

Largest grants

Bottom Line$300,000
Juvenile Protective Association$300,000
CHICAGO SCHOLARS$250,000
ONE MILLION DEGREES$250,000
National Louis University$225,000
Vocel Viewing Our Children as Emerging Leaders$225,000
Braven Inc$200,000
COLLEGE POSSIBLE$200,000
Intrinsic Schools$175,000
Chicago HOPES for Kids$150,000
Alternatives$150,000
Springboard Collaborative$125,000
iMentor$125,000
The Bloc$100,000
Austin Childcare Provider's Network$100,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $2.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.

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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

91%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$21M · 29 repeat orgs$2.1M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +104% since the first grant, against +103% for the ones you funded once.

29 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$21M

$1.9M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+104%

+103%

Still filing today

93%

91%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $200k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationHuman ServicesYouth DevelopmentCommunity ImprovementPhilanthropyHealthOther

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

BL
Bottom Line
5× · 2020–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +179%
KC
KIPP CHICAGO SCHOOLS
5× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +104%
JP
Juvenile Protective Association
4× · 2021–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +91%

Funded once

OG
One Goal
one grant, 2020 · $315k
MF
McCormick Foundation Communities Programgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $200k · revenue +142%
World Central Kitchen Incgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $157k · revenue +1417%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

Chicago Learning Exchange

The Chicago Learning Exchange (CLX) is a nonprofit organization that connects and supports our city's array of out-of-school time youth-focused organizations in order to prepare youth, youth workers, and our city for the future.

Youth Development

A Better Chicago

A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth

Human Services

Chicago Education Partnership

To create a school that dramatically transforms the lives of k-8 students and prepares them for success in college and in life through: the delivery of a rigorous and personalized academic program, a focus on holistic education, and the…

Education

The University of Chicago Charter School Corporation

To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.

Education

Catalyst for Educational Change

Catalyst for educational change (cec) is a nonprofit consulting agency that works with adult leaders in solving complex problems in educational systems. cec uses continuous improvement practices and deep collaboration to help educational…

Education

Tutoring Chicago

Tutoring chicago delivers the power of education through one-to-one tutoring.

Arts & Culture

Chicago Votes

Leadership development and non partisan civic education.

Civil Rights

Midtown-Metro Achievement Centers

Midtown-Metro Achievement Centers guides low-income urban youth in Chicago along pathways of success. Our proven enrichment programs embrace the dignity of the person by focusing on academic excellence, virtue development, individual…

Education

University of Chicago

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.

Education

Students Run Chicago

Health

Chicago United for Equity

Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.

Civil Rights

Chicago Collegiate Inc

To equip all students in grades five through twelve with the academic skills, intellectual habits and character traits to succeed in the college of their choice, strenghten their communities and change the world.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Home & Aid Society of Ill and the most unlike its peers is Start Early. 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 23 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 14% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

2%1/65

the rest of the field

14%

4,320/31,445

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.

05the grantee network

63 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

60/63

Grantees still filing

53/63

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Education$10,962,500Youth Development$3,043,500Human Services$2,885,000Other$2,791,982Community Improvement$2,050,000Health$955,000Philanthropy$710,000

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.

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.

Robert R McCormick FoundationIL65.2× affinity29 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Robert R McCormick Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Cme Group Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan · John D and Catherine T Macarthur · Vivo Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Fifth Third Chicagoland 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 organisation A Better Chicago 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–75%

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: Lion's Pride Mentoring.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

low risk

~6 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 3 filed years.

Track record & reputation

medium risk

3 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 7.4× since.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 841903798 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on Lion's Pride Mentoring, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 6 months of cash on hand.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2023; revenue grew over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 70% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to A Better Chicago?

Find your warmest path to A Better Chicago through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

A Better Chicago

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

63 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to A Better Chicago?

More from the funding graph

A Better Chicago

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

63 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to A Better Chicago?

More from the funding graph