· Private foundation
Bomher Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $95k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NAZARETH ACADEMY | $50,468 |
| Notre Dame | $29,500 |
| Notre Dame | $26,752 |
| Big Shoulders Fund | $15,000 |
| Mission of Our Lady | $14,040 |
| Pinnacle Foundation | $10,000 |
| NAZARETH ACADEMY | $8,015 |
| All Chicago | $7,052 |
| Diocese of Joliet - Cathoic Charities | $5,750 |
| SPECIAL FORCES SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $5,000 |
| Anchor Cross Society | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,700 |
| The Troy Keip Foundation | $2,500 |
| Mundelein Seminary | $2,000 |
| Seminary Endowment Fund | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 88% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +24% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 12 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- BSBig Shoulders Fund5× · 2020–2025 · $36k · revenue +67%
- SFSPECIAL FORCES SCHOLARSHIP FUND6× · 2020–2025 · $32k · revenue +108%
- RURush University Medical Center2× · 2020–2022 · $9k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- RAROBERT A REAUMOND FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue 0%
- MSMontessori School of Englewoodone grant, 2021 · $10k
- CTCatholic Theological Unionone grant, 2021 · $10k
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.
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
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…
The Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is an independent and separate nonprofit entity from the University of Illinois. Our mission is to encourage and administer private gifts and serve the UI System by working closely with…
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
See schedule othe mission of skills is to stand as a life-changing employment resource connecting underrepresented job seekers to employers with opportunities across industries. we do this by building multi-level, trusted relationships…
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
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…
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The mission of Chicago State Foundation is to advance the interest and welfare of CSU by building relationships, securing philanthropic support, stewarding assets and otherwise procuring private support on behalf of the University. Working…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The 100 Club of Illinois and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 37 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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, 2017–2025.
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. 44 of the 96 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 PILLARS COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL FORCES SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds ROBERT A REAUMOND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Honor Flight Chicago Corp ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds ALL CHICAGO MAKING HOMELESSNESS HISTORY ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE TROY KEIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE 100 CLUB OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds RAY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES ↗
- Who funds GUARDIAN GROUP ↗
- Who funds RIVER OF LIGHT LTD ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
- Who funds PATHWAY TO ADVENTURE COUNCIL INC BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds FEEDING PEOPLE THROUGH PLANTS NFP ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AVENUES TO INDEPENDENCE ↗
- Who funds MULLIGANEERS 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 Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · AbbVie Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Chubb Charitable 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 Bomher Family 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.