· Public charity
Chicago Blackhawks Foundation
To support programs and institutions throughout Illinois that work towards creating a better tomorrow for the youth of today.
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 39 grants below total $2,245,001 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,469,214 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $224,213 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 $10k3 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k25 grants · $526k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $768k
- $250k+2 grants · $928k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Robert McCormick Foundation | $583,251 |
| A Better Chicago | $345,000 |
| Sustainable Markets Fdn | $200,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club | $125,000 |
| True Chicago | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $75,000 |
| Sac and Fox Tribe of OK | $67,750 |
| Cancer for College Grant | $50,000 |
| Fawohodie Foundation | $50,000 |
| MAAFA Redemption Project | $50,000 |
| Chicago Storm Special Hockey | $50,000 |
| Rockford Hockey Club | $40,000 |
| Girls in the Game | $40,000 |
| Shirley Ryan Ability Lab | $40,000 |
| Chicago Warriors | $35,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +26% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
55 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 42 since wound down; 26 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, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.3M 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
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago5× · 2018–2025 · $1.7M · revenue +41%
- ABA Better Chicago4× · 2020–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +76%
- TATRICKSTER ART GALLERY6× · 2018–2023 · $370k · revenue +206%
Funded once
- SASac and Fox Helicopterone grant, 2022 · $220k
- UWUNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INCone grant, 2020 · $104k · revenue -50%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $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.
One for one chicago provides paid work-based learning, mentorship, and career readiness support for young people ages 1524 in chicago communities with high rates of unemployment and limited access to early work experience.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
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…
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
Providing academic support to children experiencing homelessness in Chicago and providing resources and services to families experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids First Chicago for Education and the most unlike its peers is Let's Talk Womxn (Fka Msedg - Mehak Sehar Educating Girls Globally Nfp). 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 23 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
68 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. 68 of the 138 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 Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds A Better Chicago ↗
- Who funds CANTIGNY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRICKSTER ART GALLERY ↗
- Who funds AMATUER HOCKEY ASSOC ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds EMBARC INC ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRLS IN THE GAME NFP ↗
- Who funds COMMON THREADS ↗
- Who funds MAAFA Redemption Project ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds TRUE CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS FIRST CHICAGO FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds Youth Guidance ↗
- Who funds PILOT LIGHT ↗
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: Robert R McCormick Foundation · Community Foundation of Northern IL · Bergstrom Inc Charitable Foundation Xxxxx2008 · The Chicago Community Trust · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Blazer Foundation · The David & Colleen Anderson Charitable Foundation · The Kjellstrom Family Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc · Imc Chicago Charitable Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation 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 Chicago Blackhawks 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.
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Chicago Blackhawks 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.