· Private foundation
ACT of Hope 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cara Program | $30,000 |
| Inspiration Corporation | $30,000 |
| Growing Home Inc | $30,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $20,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $145k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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.
5 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- GHGROWING HOME INC5× · 2020–2025 · $190k · revenue +59%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY5× · 2020–2025 · $160k · revenue +17%- EREVANSTON REBUILDING WAREHOUSE4× · 2020–2024 · $151k · revenue +213%
Funded once
START EARLYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +64%- BBBIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGOone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +6%
- ELErikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depressiongraduatedone grant, 2021 · $3k · revenue +190%
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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
Employment support and exchange for veterans
North Branch Works is a membership-supported nonprofit neighborhood organization that for more than three decades has promoted balanced, job-creating economic development along the North Branch of the Chicago River.
Plant Chicago's mission is to cultivate local circular economies. We envision a paradigm shift in production, consumption, and waste driven at the local level, generating equity and economic opportunity for all residents.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
The mission of I Grow Chicago is to grow Englewood from surviving to thriving through community connection, skill building, and opportunity.
Green Chicago Restaurant Coalition's Guaranteed Green Sustainability Education Program educates foodservice operators about assessing the present state of their operation's environmental sustainability and helps them to develop a plan to…
Green city market is securing the future of food by deepening support for sustainable farmers, educating our community, and expanding access to locally-grown food.
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Chicago Food Depository and the most unlike its peers is Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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.
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 GROWING HOME INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds EVANSTON REBUILDING WAREHOUSE ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
- Who funds The Cara Program ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Erikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds OPENLANDS ↗
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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 ACT of Hope 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 ACT of Hope Foundation?
Find your warmest path to ACT of Hope 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.