· Private foundation
A Just Better Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2024–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| ILLINOIS FIRE SAFETY ALLIANCE | $20,000 |
| THE KRULAC FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CU WELFARE FOUNDATION | $9,000 |
| GLOBAL SOJOURNS GIVING CIRCLE | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| FRIENDS OF WILL UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $3,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY | $3,000 |
| FEEDING AMERICA | $3,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $3,000 |
| THE CARTER CENTER | $3,000 |
| CHICAGO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN BRAIN TUMOR ASSOCIATION | $3,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY24–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 92% of your 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.
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 0% since the first grant, against -25% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down; 8 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- IFILLINOIS FIRE SAFETY ALLIANCE2× · 2024–2025 · $40k · revenue 0%
- IGIndividual grant recipient2× · 2024–2025 · $30k
THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION2× · 2024–2025 · $6k · revenue 0%
Funded once
- TITHE I FUNDone grant, 2024 · $28k
- CKCHAMPAIGN-URBANA KIWANIS CLUB WELFARE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue -25%
- FOFRIENDS OF WILLone grant, 2024 · $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.
The mission of the university of illinois alumni association is to enhance and advance the relationship between the university of illinois at urbana-champaign (the university) and all its alumni; to inspire lifelong loyalty and pride among…
The mission of the organization is to operate exclusively for the benefit of, or to carry out the purposes of, boys and girls clubs of america, a d.c. corporation that was congressionally chartered in 1956 ("boys & girls clubs of america")…
Children's advocates for change was organized to improve the lives of children in illinois by bringing about significant changes public policies and programs for children through research, policy analysis and advocacy, public education and…
Strengthen United Way movement in Illinois
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The mission of the NBPA is reflected in the organization's commitment to the recruitment of blacks within the prosecutorial arm of the legal profession. To ensure the retention of blacks in prosecution.
Founded in 1915, webster is a private non-profit and global university that is committed to delivering high-quality learning experiences that transform students for global citizenship and individual excellence.
The Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
Poptech's mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, projects and ideas. founded in 1996 by bob metcalfe (inventor, ethernet) and john sculley (apple, pepsi), poptech originally provided a forum to critically…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club and the most unlike its peers is Wgbh Educational Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 23 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 ILLINOIS FIRE SAFETY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds CHAMPAIGN-URBANA KIWANIS CLUB WELFARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DON MOYER BOYS & GIRLS CLUB ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds American Brain Tumor Association ↗
- Who funds PHOENIX SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL SOJOURNS GIVING CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds WGBH Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds 4222 HUMANITY THROUGH BASEBALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
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: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 A Just Better 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.
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% 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.