· Private foundation
Caerus Foundation Inc
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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k56 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k57 grants · $6.0M
- $250k+18 grants · $7.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The HALO Trust USA Inc | $1,205,000 |
| National Audubon Society | $1,000,000 |
| Doctors Without Borders USA Inc | $600,000 |
| NEO Philanthropy - State Infrastructure Fund | $500,000 |
| City Year Inc | $425,000 |
| National Fish and Wildlife Foundation | $400,000 |
| The United States Energy Foundation | $400,000 |
| Ducks Unlimited | $330,000 |
| Global Strategies | $300,000 |
| Global Strategies | $300,000 |
| Tutoring Chicago | $300,000 |
| Partners In Health | $250,000 |
| MAG America | $250,000 |
| The HALO Trust USA Inc | $250,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago | $250,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $8.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Caerus Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 40% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 37% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +32% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
82 repeat relationships — 59 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 11 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, 90% 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
- THTHE HALO TRUST (USA) INC6× · 2019–2024 · $8.5M · revenue +207%
- TRThe Resurrection Project4× · 2019–2022 · $7.0M · revenue +213%
MAG AMERICA INC6× · 2019–2024 · $5.1M · revenue +135%
Funded once
- NPNAVY PIER INCone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +20%
Mequon Nature Preserve Incone grant, 2023 · $205k · revenue -37%- SISAVANNA INSTITUTEone grant, 2023 · $175k · revenue -81%
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
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 inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
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…
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Goodwill industries of metropolitan chicago, inc. ("goodwill-chicago") is a nonstock, not-for-profit illinois corporation, whose sole member is goodwill industries of southeastern wisconsin, inc. ("goodwill"), a wisconsin nonstock,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc 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 29 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) — 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 13% 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.
114 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. 114 of the 130 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 THE HALO TRUST (USA) INC ↗
- Who funds The Resurrection Project ↗
- Who funds MAG AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds MISSION GRADUATES ↗
- Who funds TUTORING CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO SCHOLARS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Global Strategies ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Howard Area Community Center ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST GRADUATE ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The People's Music School ↗
- Who funds 826 Valencia ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds ROOM TO READ ↗
- Who funds SkyArt NFP ↗
- Who funds THE ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKELAND UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE FOREST PRESERVES ↗
- Who funds NORTHWOODS LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION OF ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LIGHTS ↗
- Who funds PAWS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SERVICES OF GLENVIEWNORTHBROOK ↗
- Who funds JAMESTOWN COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
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: Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Reva and David Logan Foundation · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Windward Fund · 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 Caerus Foundation Inc 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
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 Caerus Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Caerus Foundation Inc 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.