· Private foundation
Best Walter & Edith 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k29 grants · $146k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $163k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $20,000 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| Northwestern Memoral Foundation | $20,000 |
| NORTHWEST COMMUNITY HOSPITAL | $20,000 |
| ASCENSION AUTISM SPECTRUM (ASDDRC) | $17,500 |
| CASA KANE COUNTY | $15,000 |
| MISERICORDIA HEART OF MERCY CENTER | $15,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES - CHICAGO | $15,000 |
| EDWARD FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| FAMILY SHELTER SERVICE | $10,000 |
| PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY TREASURE CHEST | $8,000 |
| MARKLUND CHILDREN'S HOME | $7,000 |
| FOX VALLEY CHRISTIAN ACTION | $6,000 |
| LAZARUS HOUSE | $5,760 |
| BEAR NECESSITIES | $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 (FY18–25, $657k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 54% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 35 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 4 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $33k 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
- NCNorthwest Community Hospital7× · 2018–2025 · $155k · revenue +25%
- MHMISERICORDIA HOME8× · 2018–2025 · $115k · revenue +70%
- CKCASA KANE COUNTY8× · 2018–2025 · $85k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- RIREHABILITATION INSTITUTE OFone grant, 2018 · $10k
- SJST JOSEPH HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $10k
- ACADVOCATE CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $8k · revenue -10%
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 enhance the quality of life for children and families by inspiring hope and empowerment and growth within all whom we serve.
Our mission is to strengthen and heal families and individuals from all walks of life through clinical service, education and research.
Administering an array of critical, intensive therapeutic interventions and/or facilitation services to emotionally and behaviorally disturbed clients for whom DCFS is legally responsible in order to stabilize their traditional or home of…
To assist children who have been victims of abuse
Child Link provides foster care, family counseling, and therapy services to Chicago area adolescents who are at risk of homelessness. Child Link also refers adolescents to other agencies that are able to provide additional resources and…
Children's services
Chicago family health center will promote health, work to prevent disease and provide treatment through the delivery of quality, accessible primary healtcare that is culturally sensitive, affordable, and responsive to community and…
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
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.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
To provide comprehensive outpatient mental health services to over 5400 individuals and their families in a consumer driven person centered delivery system. Approximately 15% of our staff members are our clients who are involved in a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Little Friends Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pickleberry Pie Inc. 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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 15% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 90 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 Northwest Community Hospital ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA HOME ↗
- Who funds CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Edward Foundation ↗
- Who funds Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest ↗
- Who funds Family Shelter Service Inc ↗
- Who funds SPECTRIOS INSTITUTE FOR LOW VISION ↗
- Who funds ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LAZARUS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Riverwoods Christian Center dba Fox Valley Christian Action ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds INFANT WELFARE SOCIETY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE HARBOUR INC ↗
- Who funds AID FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE FRIENDS INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds CASA CENTRAL SOCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital ↗
- Who funds THE HUMANITARIAN SERVICE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Kids Above All Illinois ↗
- Who funds CANINE THERAPY CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds KIDSMATTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PICKLEBERRY PIE INC ↗
- Who funds AURORA AREA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds OPEN HEART MAGIC ↗
- Who funds TEEN PARENT CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds LEMONS OF LOVE 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: The Dupage Community Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · The Chicago Community Trust · WP & HB White Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Carl R Hendrickson Family Fdn · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group
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 Best Walter & Edith 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.