· Public charity
Crossroads Fund Inc
The mission of crossroads fund, inc.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 179 grants below total $3,909,735 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $4,018,165 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $108,430 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 $10k40 grants · $307k
- $10k–50k121 grants · $2.3M
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lucy Parson Labs | $100,000 |
| Organized Communities Against | $91,000 |
| Chicago Freedom School | $87,500 |
| Building For Liberation Proje | $80,000 |
| Southside Together Organizing | $78,000 |
| BUILD Inc | $76,500 |
| Social and Environmental Entr | $74,500 |
| March 13 Fund | $74,000 |
| Cannabis Equity IL Coalition | $74,000 |
| Illinois Workers in Action | $69,000 |
| UNITED CHURCH OF ROGERS PARK | $67,500 |
| ARAB AMERICAN ACTION NETWORK | $65,000 |
| Blackroots Alliance | $62,500 |
| Alternatives Inc | $60,000 |
| Chicago Alliance Against Raci | $58,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $2.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 88% 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
202 repeat relationships — 126 still active in FY2025, 76 since wound down; 50 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $827k 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
- STSouthside Together Organizing For Power5× · 2021–2025 · $471k · revenue +182%
- BIBUILD INC5× · 2021–2025 · $353k · revenue +151%
- OCOrganized Communities Against Deportations4× · 2022–2025 · $351k · revenue +115%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $87k
- CACircles and Ciphersone grant, 2024 · $75k
- MAMamas Activating Movements foone grant, 2024 · $65k
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.
Injustice Watch is a Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization that examines issues of equity and justice in the court system.
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 Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
To strengthen communities through educational dialogue, leadership development, emotional resilience, and intercultural competence programs that help people bridge differences and build trust.
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
Serving recently arrived migrants and asylum seekers in the Chicagoland area and is committed to upholding the dignity and human rights of immigrants.
The Network is a group of 40+ member organizations dedicated to improving the lives of those impacted by gender-based violence through education, public policy and advocacy, and connecting community members with direct service providers.…
The mission of the Black Arts & Culture Alliance of Chicago is to collectively advance Black excellence in the work of the Black arts and culture sector.
EQUITY ARTS is a center for the creative economy that advances racial equity and wealth-building for artists and entrepreneurs. This reparative ownership model preserves space for synergistic exchanges between value-aligned partners. The…
Training and consulting with community organizers, supervisors and volunteers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Humanities Council Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Goldin Institute. 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 9 years old; the field is 18. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 21% of your grantees by number, and just 12% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
225 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 225 of the 453 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 MARCH 13 FUND ↗
- Who funds Southside Together Organizing For Power ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds Organized Communities Against Deportations ↗
- Who funds Alianza Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE MATTER ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FREEDOM SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Lugenia Burns Hope Center ↗
- Who funds LUCY PARSONS LABS ↗
- Who funds WORKING FAMILY SOLIDARITY ↗
- Who funds PILSEN ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHSIDERS ORGANIZED FOR UNITY AND LIBERATION ↗
- Who funds TGI MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds BLACKROOTS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SIRAT CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ILLINIOS WORKERS IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds Borderless Magazine NFP ↗
- Who funds SOAPBOX PRODUCTIONS AND ORGANIZING ↗
- Who funds Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago ↗
- Who funds Healing to Action ↗
- Who funds UNITED WORKING FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR COMMUNITY RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds RAISE YOUR HAND FOR ILLINOIS PUBLIC EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Workers Center For Racial Just NFP ↗
- Who funds LIVE FREE CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Holistic Birth Collective ↗
- Who funds Arab American Action Network ↗
- Who funds African-American Community Trust NFP ↗
- Who funds First Defense Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds THE PEOPLE'S LOBBY EDUCATION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MEN & WOMEN IN PRISON MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds FATHERS FAMILIES HEALTHY COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds WOMENS ALL POINTS BULLETIN-WAPB INC ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR SPIRITUAL & PUBLIC LDRSHP ↗
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: Field Foundation of Illinois · Woods Fund of Chicago · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Chicago Foundation for Women · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Forefront · Conant Family Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Albert Pick Jr Fund · Illinois Humanities Council Inc · Julian Grace 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 Crossroads Fund 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.