· Community foundation
Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley
To provide effective and rewarding ways for donors to fulfill their philanthropic objectives by administering charitable funds that distribute grants and scholarships to benefit the citizens of kane and kendall counties of illinois including the greater city of aurora area.
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 128 grants below total $3,606,543 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,278,447 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,671,904 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 $10k24 grants · $176k
- $10k–50k80 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k24 grants · $1.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE | $175,571 |
| CAL'S ANGELS | $121,660 |
| MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME | $104,000 |
| COLLIER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $103,994 |
| WEST AURORA SCHOOL DISTRICT 129 | $102,200 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ELGIN | $100,000 |
| HESED HOUSE | $99,064 |
| VNA HEALTH CARE | $95,870 |
| AURORA HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $95,272 |
| CASA KANE COUNTY | $81,800 |
| ILLINOIS TECH ADVANCEMENT | $70,000 |
| CLEARBOOK | $65,000 |
| BLUE COURAGE LLC | $64,423 |
| AURORA UNIVERSITY | $59,050 |
| CHAPELSTREET CHURCH | $57,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $4.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 8% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 13% of Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley’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, 84% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 94% — more 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 +42% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
175 repeat relationships — 106 still active in FY2024, 69 since wound down; 15 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $198k 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
- AFASSOCIATION FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT6× · 2017–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +104%
- PAPARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE7× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +145% · 48% of their budget
- AEAURORA EAST EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2024 · $815k · revenue +208%
Funded once
- OSOHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +8%
- COCONGREGATION OF THE MISSION MIDWEST PROVINCEone grant, 2017 · $150k
- EAEast Aurora School District 131one grant, 2019 · $105k
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.
Saint xavier university, a catholic institution inspired by the heritage of the sisters of mercy, educates persons to search for truth, think critically, communicate effectively and serve wisely and compassionately in support of human…
Provide affordable, high-quality health services and remove inequities to improve the lives of all.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
Rock river valley blood center, in partnership with our community, is dedicated to providing safe, high value blood products and services to people in need.
Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare follows the mission of Endeavor Health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
We are chicago's jesuit, catholic university - a diverse community seeking god in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.
To educate men & women to lead responsible lives by means of a curriculum grounded in liberal arts learning and complemented and extended by professional and practical experience, through the total academic and co-curricular experience,…
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Little Friends Inc and the most unlike its peers is Aurora Women's Empowerment 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 39 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.3% 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.
235 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. 235 of the 306 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 ASSOCIATION FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds PARAMOUNT ARTS CENTRE ↗
- Who funds AURORA EAST EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DELLORA A NORRIS CULTURAL ARTS CENTER LTD ↗
- Who funds AURORA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Presence Central and Suburban Hospitals Network ↗
- Who funds AURORA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds VNA Health Care ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Northwestern Memorial HealthCare ↗
- Who funds A FOUNDATION FOR WEST AURORA SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds AURORA CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ACTION TO DELIVER SHELTER INC D/B/A HESED HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CITIES IN SCHOOLS AURORA 2000 INC ↗
- Who funds CAL'S ALL-STAR ANGEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRICITY FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Fox Valley Family YMCA Inc ↗
- Who funds AS OUR OWN NFP ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds NAPA VALLEY FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AURORA AREA INTERFAITH FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds Emmaus Ministries ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE FOX RIVER VALLEY ↗
- Who funds MUTUAL GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Dunham Fund · Fox Valley United Way · Dunham Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · The Bersted Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · Efs Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Inc Mental Health Alliance · Grand Victoria Foundation · Shodeen Family Foundation · The Rich 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 Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Inc — 6% of income from government
- Oregon Health & Science University Foundation — 1% 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.