· Private foundation
Chicago Educational Research 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEMPLE BETH SHOLOM | $5,000 |
| JOHNNY'S AMBASSADORS | $3,000 |
| ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM AND EDUCATION CENTER | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| MADONNA MISSION | $2,500 |
| PCD FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| SOUL CITY CHURCH | $1,500 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| OVER THE RAINBOW HOUSING | $1,500 |
| MARGARET R BAKER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| VER INTERNATIONAL | $1,000 |
| MARK SCHONWETTER HOLOCAUST EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| SIENA MILITARY CLUB | $1,000 |
| SHALVA | $1,000 |
| CARFU - CHICAGO AREA RUGBY FOOTBALL UNION | $1,000 |
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, $22k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 36% of Chicago Educational Research Foundation’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, 71% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 36% — 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 +12% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 16 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
- HMHOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC6× · 2020–2025 · $29k · revenue +12%
- MMMadonna Mission6× · 2020–2025 · $15k · revenue +127%
- CJCHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL5× · 2021–2025 · $9k · revenue +86%
Funded once
- COCLUB OF HEARTS INCone grant, 2022 · $1k · revenue +5%
- FXFRANCES XAVIER WARDE CATHOLIC SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $1k
- SFST FRANCIS OF ASSISI CHURCHone grant, 2024 · $1k
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.
Minneapolis jewish federation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a culture of philanthropy, leverages resources to meet local and global jewish needs, and facilitates community planning to ensure a thriving and secure future.
The foundation is organized to foster, promote, support, develop, encourage and maintain the broad charitable, educational and/or religious purpose of, the jewish federation of metropolitan chicago, and the foundation as authorized in…
Michael Reese partners with the Chicagoland community to advance and advocate for lasting health solutions. We do this by carrying forward the vision of Michael Reese Hospital's Jewish founders and the generations of philanthropic…
Support the hebrew univ. of jerusalem, israel's foremost center of higher edu. & research.
The shalom hartman institute (shi) is a leading research and educational center serving israel and world jewry. we work to enrich the moral and spiritual life of israel and the jewish people, deepen the commitment to pluralism and israel's…
Make an authentic jewish education, coupled with an excellent secular education, available and affordable to all jewish families in the chicagoland community.
We steward $1.5 billion in charitable assets through donor-advised funds, endowments, and other giving vehicles. partnering with 1,400 individuals, families, and organizations, we build enduring legacies and multigenerational impact. in…
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
The jewish fund is organized and operates exclusively for charitable, educational, and religious purposes. the fund's primary activities are: supporting a jewish health care mission in the greater detroit area and michigan; promotion of…
The israel institute, inc. (the institute) enhances knowledge about modern israel by ensuring that more students have access to courses about israel during their time on campus.
Committed to exceptional healthcare quality for all and actively engaged with our community, einstein drives scientific discovery and educates compassionate leaders in health and science.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Illinois Inc and the most unlike its peers is The John W O'brien Family Foundation. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 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.
39 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. 39 of the 69 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 HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds Madonna Mission ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JEWISH DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PCD KS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VER INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds KLEO Community Family Life Center ↗
- Who funds JOHNNYS AMBASSADORS INC ↗
- Who funds SHALVA INC ↗
- Who funds CANCER WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEW BUFFALO SHORELINE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Urban Prep Academies ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COUNCIL FOR YOUTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTHBUILD LAKE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MARGARET R BAKER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ORPHANS D/B/A NPH-USA ↗
- Who funds ORT AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE MARK SCHONWETTER HOLOCAUST EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CLUB OF HEARTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Charles and M R Shapiro Foundation Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Educational Research 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.
- Keshet Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.