· Private foundation
Benjamin & Bettina Van Cleave Charitable 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Logan Square Improv | $5,000 |
| Misericordia | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| WFMT 987WTTW | $3,000 |
| Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras | $3,000 |
| Alternatives Inc | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival | $1,500 |
| Josephinum Academy | $1,500 |
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 (FY20–21, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +48% since the first grant, against -34% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 7 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
- LSLOGAN SQUARE IMPROV3× · 2023–2025 · $13k · revenue +43%
- CYCHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS6× · 2020–2025 · $8k · revenue +74%
- CIChicago International Puppet Theater Festival4× · 2021–2025 · $5k · revenue +282%
Funded once
- HEHoward & Evanston Community Centerone grant, 2024 · $2k
- CCCURTAIN CALL COMMUNITY THEATERone grant, 2020 · $1k
- ENECOVIVA NFPone grant, 2021 · $1k · revenue -75%
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 enrich the lives of our community through dance education and performance while developing Chicago's native talent pool in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism & ethnic diversity.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
To present high quality arts programming and musical performances that will educate, enrich and improve the quality of life for the diverse Chicago cultural communities and beyond.
Create connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration.
Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Our core values are built around…
Constellation is a performing arts presenter with an emphasis on forward- thinking practices, particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
Teatro Vista Productions is a non-profit theatre-based company dedicated to multidisciplinary artists of color whose artistic expression on stage and beyond is rooted in the transformative power of owning and telling our own stories.
Pegasus Theatre Chicago is a professional theater approaching 45 years of supporting Chicagos diverse community by producing accessible, socially relevant theatre and promoting the development of new artists for the stage. Our mission is…
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra's mission as a professional orchestra is to utilize the universal expression of music to create profound, inspiring, and personal connections between the people and communities of Chicagos Southland.
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
THE ORGANIZATION enriches the lives of the young Chicago of children with their classic fairy tale productions. The ORGANIZATION colorful shows introduce children ages 2 to 10 to the magic of live theater, and inspire children to laugh,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Foundations of Music and the most unlike its peers is Ecoviva Nfp. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 21 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 LOGAN SQUARE IMPROV ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS ↗
- Who funds Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival ↗
- Who funds Albany Park Theater Project ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds CURTAIN CALL COMMUNITY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Howard Area Community Center ↗
- Who funds ECOVIVA NFP ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds CHANGING WORLDS ↗
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 Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Ncrc Community Development Fund Inc · Mary V Duffy Charitable Foundation · Prince Foundation · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · WP & HB White Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · 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 Benjamin & Bettina Van Cleave Charitable 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 Benjamin & Bettina Van Cleave Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Benjamin & Bettina Van Cleave Charitable 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.