Skip to content
Big Shoulders Fund at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Big Shoulders Fund

We provide support to underserved schools which provide a quality, values-based education for Chicago's children.

$42M
Granted FY2025still arriving
84
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$1.4M
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2018 to 2025.

Education$97MReligion$2.5MSocial Science$250kHealth$13kScience & Tech$5k
02FY2025 · 84 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 84 grants below total $24,333,400, the rows itemized in this filing. The $41,830,502 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $17,497,102 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k9 grants · $67k
  • $10k–50k11 grants · $206k
  • $50k–250k30 grants · $3.9M
  • $250k+34 grants · $20M
$160,894
Median grant
2
States reached
$152M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
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
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%Epiphany School: $896k → 14%Epiphany School: $634k → 14%Aquinas Catholic School (IN): $2.1M → 15%Epiphany School: $509k → 14%Our Lady of Tepeyac Elementary School: $493k → 14%Epiphany School: $484k → 14%St Malachy School: $715k → 14%St Malachy School: $622k → 14%Children of Peace School: $561k → 14%Holy Angels School: $714k → 14%Holy Angels School: $708k → 14%Holy Angels School: $705k → 14%Santa Lucia School: $598k → 14%St Francis de Sales High School (Chicago): $1.2M → 14%St Francis de Sales High School (Chicago): $1.2M → 14%St Francis de Sales High School: $1.1M → 14%St Francis de Sales High School (Chicago): $981k → 14%St Francis de Sales High School (Chicago): $682k → 14%St Francis de Sales High School (Chicago): $609k → 14%St Francis de Sales High School: $596k → 14%St Francis de Sales High School: $524k → 14%Our Lady of Guadalupe School: $487k → 14%Augustus Tolton Academy: $718k → 14%Augustus Tolton Academy: $598k → 14%Augustus Tolton Academy: $588k → 14%St Ailbe School: $573k → 14%Augustus Tolton Academy: $503k → 14%St Philip Neri School: $708k → 14%St Philip Neri School: $487k → 14%St Angela School: $917k → 14%St Margaret of Scotland School: $619k → 14%St Margaret of Scotland School: $536k → 14%St Ann School: $549k → 14%St Sylvester School: $712k → 14%Visitation School: $998k → 14%Visitation School: $800k → 14%St Sabina Academy: $1.4M → 14%St Ethelreda School: $1.2M → 14%St Ethelreda School: $1.1M → 14%St Ethelreda School: $711k → 14%St Ethelreda School: $583k → 14%St Sabina Academy: $551k → 14%St Mary Star of the Sea School: $734k → 14%Queen of the Universe School: $629k → 14%St Mary Star of the Sea School: $502k → 14%Pope John Paul II Catholic School: $652k → 14%St Constance School: $824k → 14%Academy of St Benedict the African: $598k → 14%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

98%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$98M · 92 repeat orgs$1.6M to everyone else

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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

92
9

Total granted

$98M
$85k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+11%
+91%

Still filing today

2%
44%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
EducationHealthScience & TechOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • SF
    ST FRANCIS DE SALES HIGH SCHOOL
    8× · 2018–2025 · $6.9M
  • SE
    ST ETHELREDA CHURCH
    8× · 2018–2025 · $5.2M
  • OL
    OUR LADY OF AFRICA PARISH
    8× · 2018–2025 · $4.1M

Funded once

  • MM
    MOTHER MCAULEY HIGH SCHOOL
    one grant, 2019 · $25k
  • JC
    JOLIET CATHOLIC ACADEMY
    one grant, 2021 · $13k
  • MC
    MOBILE CARE FOUNDATIONgraduated
    one grant, 2018 · $13k · revenue +153%
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
5/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

ST FRANCIS DE SALES HIGH SCHOOL: $6,878,353 · OtherST FRANCIS DE SALES HIGH SCHOOLST ETHELREDA CHURCH: $5,200,194 · OtherOUR LADY OF AFRICA PARISH: $4,076,917 · OtherVisitation School: $3,534,189 · OtherEpiphany School: $3,358,821 · OtherST SABINA CHURCH: $3,330,736 · Other+103 more: $73,145,495 · Other+103 moreSAN MIGUEL FEBRES CORDERO SCHOOL INC: $268,476 · EducationCristo Rey St Martin College Prep: $112,932 · Education+1 more: $5,000 · EducationMOBILE CARE FOUNDATION: $12,500 · HealthNational Society of Black Engineers: $5,000 · Science & Tech
Other$99,524,705Education$386,408Health$12,500Science & Tech$5,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetSAN MIGUEL FEBRES CORDERO SCHOOL INC: $268,476 over 8y, 2.8% of budgetCristo Rey St Martin College Prep: $112,932 over 5y, 0.1% of budgetMOBILE CARE FOUNDATION: $12,500 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetLUBAVITCH GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL INC: $8,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetHFS CHICAGO SCHOLARS: $5,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetNational Society of Black Engineers: $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Institute for Quality…Irish Fellowship Educ…Helen V Brach Foundat…Enchanted BackpackThe Center for Educat…Robert R McCormick Fo…The Cuneo FoundationKehillah Jewish Educa…Fred J Brunner Founda…The Canning FoundationWP & HB White Foundat…United Way of Metropo…
Institute for Quality Education IncIN35.1× affinity15 shared granteesties to 2 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Big Shoulders Fund funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Big Shoulders Fund. Bigger dots raise more.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 114 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Big Shoulders’ filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home