· Public charity
Big Shoulders Fund
We provide support to underserved schools which provide a quality, values-based education for Chicago's children.
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.
The 84 grants below total $24,333,400 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $41,830,502 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $17,497,102 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k9 grants · $67k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $206k
- $50k–250k30 grants · $3.9M
- $250k+34 grants · $20M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| St Sabina Academy | $1,369,348 |
| St Ethelreda School | $1,223,850 |
| St Francis de Sales High School | $1,061,550 |
| St Angela School | $917,202 |
| Epiphany School | $895,883 |
| St Constance School | $823,640 |
| Visitation School | $799,930 |
| St Mary Star of the Sea School | $734,101 |
| St Sylvester School | $712,399 |
| Holy Angels School | $707,608 |
| Pope John Paul II Catholic School | $652,160 |
| Queen of the Universe School | $629,330 |
| St Malachy School | $621,509 |
| St Margaret of Scotland School | $618,810 |
| Augustus Tolton Academy | $597,540 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% of your 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.
92 repeat relationships — 71 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 13 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M 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
- SFST FRANCIS DE SALES HIGH SCHOOL8× · 2018–2025 · $6.9M
- SEST ETHELREDA CHURCH8× · 2018–2025 · $5.2M
- OLOUR LADY OF AFRICA PARISH8× · 2018–2025 · $4.1M
Funded once
- MMMOTHER MCAULEY HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2019 · $25k
- JCJOLIET CATHOLIC ACADEMYone grant, 2021 · $13k
- MCMOBILE CARE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $13k · revenue +153%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
Your grantees are a median of 80 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
6 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. 6 of the 114 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.
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: Institute for Quality Education Inc · Irish Fellowship Educational & Cultural Foundation · Helen V Brach Foundation · Enchanted Backpack · The Center for Education Reform · Robert R McCormick Foundation · The Cuneo Foundation · Kehillah Jewish Education Fund · Fred J Brunner Foundation · The Canning Foundation · WP & HB White Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago 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 Big Shoulders Fund 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.