· Private foundation
Bednyak Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k27 grants · $56k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $126k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $170k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Jewish United Fund of Chicago | $70,000 |
| American Israel Education Foundation | $50,000 |
| American Friends of Israel Navy | $50,000 |
| Jewish Community Centers | $30,000 |
| Childrens Oncology Group | $25,000 |
| Childrens Hospital of | $20,000 |
| US Holocaust Museum | $11,392 |
| Share out Spare Purchase | $10,000 |
| Urban Initiatives Inc | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Chicago Botanical Garden | $10,000 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | $6,500 |
| The Ark | $5,589 |
| Invest for Kids Inc | $5,150 |
| Communities in Schools of Chicago | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $101k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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 +23% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 14 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k 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
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO6× · 2018–2024 · $236k · revenue +34%
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY4× · 2018–2024 · $50k · revenue +38%
- TUThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum5× · 2019–2024 · $28k · revenue +5%
Funded once
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Incone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue -9%- ICILLINOIS COVID-19 RESPONSEone grant, 2020 · $50k
- JCJewish Child and Family Servicesone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +5%
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.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
Chicago childrens museum is a place where families and caregivers with infants and children are encouraged to create, explore, and discover together through play. the museum features three vibrant floors of exhibits and activities that…
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Our mission is to strengthen and heal families and individuals from all walks of life through clinical service, education and research.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
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…
We believe in the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great art and opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to the Chicago region and the nation, and to advance the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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 35 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
49 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. 49 of the 99 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 The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ISRAEL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds Jewish Child and Family Services ↗
- Who funds URBAN INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds LYNN SAGE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Invest for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE LYON FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Edmundson Art Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds ENCHANTED BACKPACK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE GREEN BAY TRAIL ↗
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 Kadens Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Daniel R and Karen Kales Lee Family Foundation C/O Karen K Lee · Bergstein Family Foundation · Domont Family Foundation · The Netter Foundation Inc · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · AbbVie 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 Bednyak Family 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 Bednyak Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bednyak Family 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.