· Public charity
Chicago Chesed Fund
To raise and distribute funds, goods, food, and assistance to the poverty-stricken in the jewish community.
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.
The 22 grants below total $244,937 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $7,362,897 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $7,117,960 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $73k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $172k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ORTHODOX UNION | $25,000 |
| NEIMAS BAIS YAAKOV INC | $24,000 |
| JOAN DACHS BAIS YAAKOV | $21,700 |
| FRIENDS OF MEOHR BAIS YAAKOV | $14,025 |
| BAIS YAAKOV HIGH SCHOOL | $13,000 |
| YOTZER OHR | $12,000 |
| TELSHE YESHIVA CLEVELAND | $11,500 |
| MACHON BNOS YEHUDAH | $10,500 |
| SHALOM MONTESSORI SCHOOL LLC | $10,490 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TIFERET CENTER | $10,000 |
| YESHIVAT AISH HATORAH | $10,000 |
| YESHIVA MILL BASIN CONG SHAAR HATALMUD | $10,000 |
| BELLEVUE UNIVERSITY | $9,380 |
| YESHIVA UNIVERSITY | $8,513 |
| PLAYTHINKS | $8,500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 91% of your 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 +156% since the first grant, against +52% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 12 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $129k 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
- BYBais Yaakov High School of Chicago7× · 2017–2024 · $43k · revenue +70%
- YKYESHIVAS KESSER YONAH6× · 2017–2024 · $40k · revenue +330%
- RCRABBINICAL COLLEGE OF TELSHE INC5× · 2019–2024 · $33k · revenue +117%
Funded once
- ACARIE CROWN HEBREW DAY SCHOOLone grant, 2021 · $25k
- YLYACHAD LEARNING AND TOURSone grant, 2019 · $18k
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF NEVEH ZIONone grant, 2017 · $14k · revenue +4%
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.
Support of religious schools in Israel
Religious School
To operate a religious school for high school and post high school students.
The school trains advanced talmudic scholars, enabling them to become high level teachers and religious leaders in israel and the united states using specific methodology combining traditional talmudic study with innovative learning…
To operate a high school offering religious instruction and general studies as well as a post high school program of talmudic studies. the school shall be run under the standards of orthodox jewish law and tradition.
To provide religious education and services to our students in the tradition of the orthodox jewish faith
To provide academic excellence in both limudei kodesh and secular studies.
Inspire and assist each student in his quest to nurture a personal relationship with hashem, develop and refine his character, immerse himself in serious torah scholarship and attain the knowledge and skills necessary to be an articulate…
To provide religious Jewish education.
School for providing jewish education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Bnot Torah Institute and the most unlike its peers is Nelnet Foundation. 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 27 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 9% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 51 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 Bais Yaakov High School of Chicago ↗
- Who funds YESHIVAS KESSER YONAH ↗
- Who funds RABBINICAL COLLEGE OF TELSHE INC ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI TORAH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NEIMAS BAIS YAAKOV INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TIFERET CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MEOHR BAIS YAAKOV INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BNOT TORAH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NEVEH ZION ↗
- Who funds MACHON MAAYAN INC ↗
- Who funds YOTZER OHR INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BNOS YEHUDIS IN ↗
- Who funds LAKEWOOD CHEDER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds YESHIVAT AISH HATORAH ↗
- Who funds Bellevue University ↗
- Who funds YESHIVA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PLAYTHINKS ↗
- Who funds TOURO UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BAIS KAILA TORAH PREPARATORY HS ↗
- Who funds Nelnet Foundation ↗
- Who funds GATES OF ZION 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 Ojc Fund · Jewish Communal Fund · Todd a and Raphaela Stern Family Foundation · Kehillah Jewish Education Fund · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Center for Jewish Education Inc · Cambridge Charitable Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Lakewood Cheder School Inc · Jack Adjmi Family Foundation Inc · Bitton Family Foundation Inc · Aj & Sl Stern Family 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 Chicago Chesed Fund 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Jewish Education for Girls Inc — 6% 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 Chicago Chesed Fund?
Find your warmest path to Chicago Chesed Fund 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.