· Private foundation
Aurora Women's Empowerment Foundation
To elevate and empower aurora-area women and future women by making grants to tax-exempt nonprofits engaged in meaningful, measurable work that helps women over the hurdles of inequity and exclusion, propelling them forward with life-changing programs and services.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 49% of AURORA WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $162k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE INC | $50,000 |
| VNA HEALTH CARE | $45,000 |
| WEST AURORA A FOUNDATION | $29,925 |
| FAMILY FOCUS | $25,000 |
| IMPERFECT ANGELS ORGANIZATION | $25,000 |
| ALIVE CENTER NFP | $20,000 |
| SIMPLY DESTINEE | $16,666 |
| IMSA FUND FOR ADVANCEMENT OF | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,250 |
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 (FY23–25, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 70% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +50% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 3 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
- PAPARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE4× · 2022–2025 · $175k · revenue +57%
- FAFARMWORKER AND LANDSCAPER ADVOCACY PROJECT4× · 2021–2024 · $150k · revenue +164%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS INC2× · 2022–2023 · $138k · revenue +50%
Funded once
- LDLiteracy DuPagegraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +181%
- SFSAFE FAMILIES FOR CHILDREN ALLIANCEone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue +20%
- CFCOMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE FOXone grant, 2024 · $7k
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.
Female strong is a 501c3 non-profit organization and a community of committed individuals that offer hands-on programs, mentorship, and experiences that build confidence in middle and high school girls. we support the inclusion of all…
Recruit, train, and support volunteer citizen advocates to effectively speak to the best interests of abused, neglected, and dependent children in dupage county's juvenile court system because every child has a right to a safe, permanent…
Focus Fairies Mentoring is a community-based nonprofit that empowers and uplifts Black girls and young women of color, ages 7 to 21, on Chicago's West and South sides who have experienced vicarious trauma, violence, and systemic inequities.
To serve as a catalyst for business development in the Aurora region
Illinois Action for Children uplifts children and all who care for them, advancing strong families and prosperous communities.
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…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Improve the lives of children in illinois by bringing about significant changes in public policies and programs for children through research, policy analysis and advocacy, public education and community outreach.
To promote common business interests, growth, opportunity, and general economic welfare for businesses in Aurora, IL and the surrounding metropolitan area.
Helping chicagoland's at-risk children and their families build, achieve and sustain better lives.
Voluntary Action Center, which serves Bureau, Dekalb, Kendall, Lasalle and Putnam counties provides high quality services that address the basic transportation and nutrition needs of its communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Focus and the most unlike its peers is Fox Valley Music Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 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 PARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE ↗
- Who funds FARMWORKER AND LANDSCAPER ADVOCACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds VNA Health Care ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds IMPERFECT ANGELS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds A FOUNDATION FOR WEST AURORA SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds ALIVE CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds SIMPLY DESTINEE ↗
- Who funds Family Focus ↗
- Who funds DVSA COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE FOX RIVER VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Literacy DuPage ↗
- Who funds SAFE FAMILIES FOR CHILDREN ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds Rush Copley Foundation ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY MUSIC 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: Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · Dunham Fund · Dunham Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Fox Valley United Way · The Dupage Community Foundation · The Allstate Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Aurora Women's Empowerment 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 Aurora Women's Empowerment Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Aurora Women's Empowerment 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.