· Private foundation
Bill Nygren Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k9 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $203k
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BERRIEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $205,000 |
| STRIDES FOR PEACE | $135,000 |
| TRI-COUNTY COUNCIL FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT INC | $135,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CHICAGO | $100,000 |
| BENTON HARBOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP | $100,000 |
| SW MICHIGAN REGIONAL CHAMBER FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| EMERGE INNOVATION HUB | $75,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILS | $50,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $50,000 |
| HARBOR COUNTY MISSION | $50,000 |
| MERCY HOME FOR BOYS & GIRLS | $50,000 |
| MOSAIC CCDA | $50,000 |
| COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATESSW MICHIGAN | $25,000 |
| VIDA VALIENTE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $25,000 |
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, $535k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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.
45 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 6 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $227k 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
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO5× · 2018–2023 · $390k · revenue +121%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN4× · 2018–2021 · $360k · revenue +161%
- BBBIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO7× · 2018–2024 · $350k · revenue +17%
Funded once
University of Chicagoone grant, 2022 · $350k · revenue +22%- AFAMERICAN FUND FOR CHARITIESone grant, 2017 · $223k
- 3D30 DAY FUND INC (BARSTOOL FUND)one grant, 2020 · $100k
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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
To achieve parity in economic opportunity for people of color by advancing multiracial leadership in corporate governance, expanding the talent pipline for executive-level management, and growing minority businesses.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
To enhance the quality of the chicago metropolitan area's future leaders in whom the community will vest responsibility for its well being.
The mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Berrien Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pine Cay Project. 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 36 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
44 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 44 of the 82 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 UNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds STRIDES FOR PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds BERRIEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds TRI-COUNTY COUNCIL FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT INC (D/B/A FLOWERS EARLY LEARNING) ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN FUND FOR CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds HARBOR COUNTRY MISSION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds BENTON HARBOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds EMERGE INNOVATION HUB ↗
- Who funds Pine Cay Project ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOSAIC CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BERRIEN COUNTY TRAILS ↗
- Who funds The Springboard Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds THE AVENUE FAMILY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds DANIEL MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds READINESS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF BERRIEN AND CASS INC ↗
- Who funds Vida Valiente Foundation ↗
- Who funds GROWTH WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds ONE ACRE FUND ↗
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: Berrien Community Foundation Inc · Whirlpool Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Fettig Family Foundation · The McLoughlin Family Foundation · United Way of Southwest Michigan · The Indianapolis Foundation Inc · Degroot Family Foundation · The Marzke Family Foundation · Cme Group Foundation · 1st Source Bank Foundation Inc Xxx-Xx-Xxxx
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 Bill Nygren 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 Bill Nygren Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bill Nygren 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.