· Public charity
Chicago Cares Inc
Chicago Cares, Inc.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2023–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 7 grants below total $115,600 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $121,100 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $5,500 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Southwest Organizing Project | $25,000 |
| Northwest Side Community Deve | $15,600 |
| SINAI COMMUNITY INSTITUTE INC | $15,000 |
| South Shore Chamber Community | $15,000 |
| Logan Square Neighborhood A | $15,000 |
| PHALANX FAMILY SERVICES | $15,000 |
| Team Englewood | $15,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 60% 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.
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 71% of Chicago Cares 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, 97% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 29% — 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 +33% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 2 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, 74% 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
- SOSOUTHWEST ORGANIZING PROJECT2× · 2023–2024 · $85k · revenue +72%
- NSNORTHWEST SIDE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR2× · 2023–2024 · $31k · revenue +76%
- LSLogan Square Neighborhood Association2× · 2023–2024 · $30k · revenue +33%
Funded once
- NLNORTH LAWNDALE COMMUNITY COORDINATING COUNCIL INCone grant, 2023 · $15k
- 1S18TH STREET CASA DE CULTURA NFPgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +181%
- CMCHICAGO MOBILE MAKERSone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -28%
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.
Community Desk Chicago ("the Desk") is an Illinois 501 (C)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to advance equitable economic prosperity in collaboration with historically under-resourced communities. The Organization serves as a help desk and…
Provide an open forum for southwest side residents to voice their concerns, hear new perspectives from their neighbors, learn about existing public resources, launch economic, educational, and
Chicago Workers' Collaborative's mission is to promote full employment and equality for the lowest wage-earners, primarily temporary staffing workers, in the Chicago region through leadership and skills training, critical assistance and…
The Alliance of the SouthEast (ASE) builds the capacity of leaders, organizers, and associations that carry out community and social change. We envision a powerful grassroots base that impacts decision makers and wins real improvements in…
North Branch Works is a membership-supported nonprofit neighborhood organization that for more than three decades has promoted balanced, job-creating economic development along the North Branch of the Chicago River.
To strengthen communities through educational dialogue, leadership development, emotional resilience, and intercultural competence programs that help people bridge differences and build trust.
Wsf is committed to driving economic revitalization of chicago's west side by investing in people, systems and infrastructure to foster thriving communities. the organization vision of chicago's west side becoming an economically thriving…
To provide outreach services and resources
Enlace Chicago convenes, organizes, and builds the capacity of little village stakeholders to confront systemic inequities and barriers to economic and social access. Enlace Chicago is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives…
The mission of I Grow Chicago is to grow Englewood from surviving to thriving through community connection, skill building, and opportunity.
SECC collaborates with other University of Chicago businesses and organizations to foster a spirit of community and to enhance ongoing quality of life across neighborhoods it serves
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Forward Momentum Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Reading Between the Lines Nfp. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 17 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 SOUTHWEST ORGANIZING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds South Shore Chamber Community Development Corp ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST SIDE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR ↗
- Who funds Logan Square Neighborhood Association ↗
- Who funds Teamwork Englewood Inc ↗
- Who funds PHALANX FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAWNDALE COMMUNITY COORDINATING COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds SINAI COMMUNITY INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds 18TH STREET CASA DE CULTURA NFP ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MOBILE MAKERS ↗
- Who funds OPENCOLLECTIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Serving People with a Mission ↗
- Who funds READING BETWEEN THE LINES NFP ↗
- Who funds ILLINIOS WORKERS IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds FORWARD MOMENTUM CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE 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 · Forefront · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Local Initiatives Support Corporation · University of Chicago Medical Center · Field Foundation of Illinois · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Allstate Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Cares 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.
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.