· Public charity
Bellows Family Foundation
The foundation is exclusively organized to foster, promote, support, develop, encourage and maintain a specific charitable, educational, or religious purpose or function of, or as authorized in the charter of, the jewish federation of metropolitan chicago.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 25 grants below total $1,066,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,098,755 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $32,755 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $119k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $894k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HEBREW THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE | $150,500 |
| PROJECT EXTREME | $150,000 |
| YESHIVAT ASHREINU | $125,000 |
| AMIT CHILDREN INC | $100,000 |
| YESHIVA UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| ARIE CROWN HEBREW DAY SCHOOL | $93,750 |
| HILLEL TORAH NORTH SUBURBAN DAY SCHOOL | $75,000 |
| MANHATTAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE SYNAGOGUE | $50,000 |
| CAMP MOSHAVA OF WILD ROSE INC | $50,000 |
| FRIENDS OF YAD SARAH INC | $23,750 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $18,000 |
| ONE ISRAEL FUND LTD | $15,000 |
| CHICAGO CHESED FUND | $12,500 |
| THE ARK | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BIMAD ALON MOREH INC | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $469k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 +54% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 11 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $316k 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
- CECAMP EXTREME D/B/A PROJECT EXTREME8× · 2017–2024 · $894k · revenue +21%
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MATAN INC7× · 2017–2023 · $430k · revenue +59%
- FOFRIENDS OF REFUGEES OF EASTERN EUROPE INC2× · 2021–2023 · $300k · revenue +0%
Funded once
- CMCHICAGO MIKVAH ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2023 · $43k · revenue -13%
- MVMISHPAT VEHALACHA BEYISRAELone grant, 2017 · $38k · 74% of their budget
- UCUPWARD COMMUNITY SERVICESgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $27k · revenue +39%
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.
Religious Teaching
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
Ohr Yisrael is a religious institution that provides religious services and instruction to Rabbis and community members.
encourage and facilitate the observance of traditional orthodox Jewish practices around the world.
The organization will provide financial assistance to educational institutions that promote the observance of the jewish religion, its laws and traditions, and sacred texts, including yeshivat nachalat yossef, located in jerusalem, israel.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kollel Torah Mitzion Inc and the most unlike its peers is Camp Extreme D/B/a Project Extreme. 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 34 years old; the field is 16. 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 47 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 CAMP EXTREME D/B/A PROJECT EXTREME ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MATAN INC ↗
- Who funds KOLLEL TORAH MITZION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF REFUGEES OF EASTERN EUROPE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHAI LIFELINE INC ↗
- Who funds ONE ISRAEL FUND LTD ↗
- Who funds SOULU ↗
- Who funds CAMP MOSHAVA OF WILD ROSE INC ↗
- Who funds Yeshivat Ashreinu Inc ↗
- Who funds AMIT CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds YESHIVA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds KEHILLAH JEWISH EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MIKVAH ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MISHPAT VEHALACHA BEYISRAEL ↗
- Who funds UPWARD COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF YAD SARAH INC ↗
- Who funds HILLEL FOUNDATION OF CAMBRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BIMAD ALON MOREH INC ↗
- Who funds MIDRASH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ISRALIGHT SOUTH FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF YESHIVAT HAKOTEL INC ↗
- Who funds Ohr Torah Stone Institutions of Israel ↗
- Who funds THE ARK ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NATAL 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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Bitton Family Foundation Inc · Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · Walder Foundation · Todd a and Raphaela Stern Family Foundation · Noah Wolff Family Foundation Inc · Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago · The Novick Family Foundation · Elliott and Ronni Charitable Fdn · Dennis and Joyce Ruben Foundation · Sheldon and Freda Robinson Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Bellows 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
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Find your warmest path to Bellows 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.