· Public charity
Chicago Federation of Labor Workforce and Community Initiative
To engage working men and women, and the community at large, in order to improve health, income, and education.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 64% of Chicago Federation of Labor Workforce and Community Initiative’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 30 grants below total $1,591,142 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,101,967 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $510,825 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 $10k4 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $365k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $431k
- $250k+2 grants · $761k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| IUOE Local 399 Ed Training Fund | $405,033 |
| IBEW Local 9 Apprenticeship | $356,172 |
| USIC Locating Services LLC | $217,321 |
| Climate Pros | $89,659 |
| Ironworkers Local 1 | $71,094 |
| Architectural Metal Trainee School for Local 63 | $52,826 |
| Select Development | $49,043 |
| Air & Wellness Safety Training Company | $43,274 |
| Spider Company | $35,669 |
| Oberg Medical Products | $30,035 |
| Local 444 Ironworkers | $20,056 |
| Illinois Institute of Technology | $20,000 |
| Concussion Legacy Foundation | $20,000 |
| Special Olympics IL | $16,500 |
| AJR Industries | $14,032 |
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 (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 79% 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.
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 +23% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 18 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, 44% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $887k 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
- IUINT'L UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 399 EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FUND4× · 2022–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +31%
- OEOPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 150 APPRENTICESHIP FUND3× · 2022–2024 · $762k · revenue +17%
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS ELECTRICAL JOINT APPRENTICESHIP AND TRAINING TRUST3× · 2022–2024 · $608k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- ILIBEW LOCAL 9 APPRENTICESHIPone grant, 2022 · $188k
- IUINTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 399 HEALTH & WELFARE TRUgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $128k · revenue +30%
- IFIYA FOODSone grant, 2023 · $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.
Apprentice training
The trust was established to provide apprenticeship and journeyman training, testing, education, job skill development and enhancement for the operating engineer trades.
To provide training, skill improvement and safety education to eligible participants.
To promote unity of action in dealing with employers and to coordinate and consolidate the activities of its various affiliated local unions so they can work in a harmonious and united way.
To pay or provide tuition and expenses for courses, education and training for eligible participants.
To provide job training programs for personnel employed as operating engineers in Indiana and Illinois.
Training and education of operating engineers.
To develop the most skilled, responsible and responsive electricians and technicians in the united states of america. we are dedicated to building professionals who have the expertise, character and sense of teamwork to bring value to the…
The organization provides instruction for apprentices and journeymen in the electrical industry.
Education and training to improve the skills of member engineers in the international union of operating engineers, local 295-295b, c, d.
Labor organization representing members in a variety of industries including construction, construction material production, steel mill services/slag processing, landscaping and many others principally in illinois, indiana and iowa. the…
To provide training for members of local 218s.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Liuna Chicagoland Laborers' District Council Training and Apprentice Fund and the most unlike its peers is Chicago Jobs With Justice. 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 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 58 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 INT'L UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 399 EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FUND ↗
- Who funds OPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 150 APPRENTICESHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS ELECTRICAL JOINT APPRENTICESHIP AND TRAINING TRUST ↗
- Who funds LOCAL 9 IBEW & MIDDLE STATES APPRENTICE AND JOURNEYMAN TRAINING FUND ↗
- Who funds THE APPRENTICE TRAINING FUND FOR LOCAL 1 OF THE IABSOIW ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS LOCAL 399 HEALTH & WELFARE TRU ↗
- Who funds ARCHITECTUAL METAL TRAINEE SCHOOL FOR 63 AND THE IRON LEAGUE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THEATRICAL STAGE EMPLOYEES UNION LOCAL TWO ↗
- Who funds MECHANICS LOCAL 701 TRAINING FUND ↗
- Who funds LIUNA CHICAGOLAND LABORERS' DISTRICT COUNCIL TRAINING AND APPRENTICE FUND ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO JOBS WITH JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds SWEENEY CLASSIC ↗
- Who funds JESSE WHITE FOUNDATION LTD ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FEDERATION OF MUSICIANS OF THE US AND CANADA LOCAL #10-208 ↗
- Who funds MACHINERY MOVERS RIGGERS AND ERECTORS UNION LOCAL #136 TRAINING TRUST ↗
- Who funds LOCAL #444 IRON WORKERS JOINT APPRENTICESHIP & TRAINING TRUST FUND ↗
- Who funds CONCUSSION LEGACY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds JUNETEENTH ILLINOIS INC NFP ↗
- Who funds CIVIC CONSULTING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds EQUALITY ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds SEIU LOCAL NO 1 TRAINING FUND ↗
- Who funds SOS CHILDREN'S VILLAGES-USA 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: Indiana Illinois & Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting · Laborers' Int'L Union of North America District Council of Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · Amazonsmile 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 Federation of Labor Workforce and Community Initiative 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.
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Find your warmest path to Chicago Federation of Labor Workforce and Community Initiative 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.