· Private foundation
Dillon Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k94 grants · $391k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $519k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $867,500 |
| STERLING RIVERFRONT FOUNDATION | $382,500 |
| WOODLAWN ARTS ACADEMY | $230,347 |
| Individual grant recipient | $196,472 |
| UNITED WAY OF WHITESIDE COUNTY | $192,750 |
| COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT 5 | $159,259 |
| STERLING PUBLIC LIBRARY | $153,000 |
| GREATER STERLING DEVELOPMENT CORP | $144,566 |
| WHITESIDE AREA CAREER CENTER | $84,000 |
| SAUK VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $78,000 |
| ROCK RIVER HOSPICE AND HOME | $68,850 |
| CITY OF STERLING | $57,958 |
| STERLING ROCK FALLS FAMILY YMCA | $55,000 |
| STERLING SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $49,000 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $36,750 |
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 (FY17–25, $571k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +33% for the ones you funded once.
191 repeat relationships — 127 still active in FY2025, 64 since wound down; 6 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $78k 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
- GSGREATER STERLING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION9× · 2017–2025 · $3.2M · revenue +75% · 74% of their budget
- SSSTERLING SCHOOLS FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $920k · revenue +208%
- WAWOODLAWN ARTS ACADEMY4× · 2022–2025 · $869k · revenue +34% · 31% of their budget
Funded once
- HOHOSPICE OF ROCK RIVER VALLEYone grant, 2017 · $121k
- SASTERLING ATHLETIC BOOSTER CLUBone grant, 2017 · $20k
- SHSULLIVAN HOME - OPERATING EXPENSESone grant, 2017 · $13k
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.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
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…
To support salem health, salem health west valley and related organizations.
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.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
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…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Capital Research Center and the most unlike its peers is Sterling Today Inc. 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 44 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 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
100 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. 100 of the 247 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 GREATER STERLING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WHITESIDE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds STERLING RIVERFRONT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STERLING SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WOODLAWN ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds STERLING-ROCK FALLS FAMILY YMCA ↗
- Who funds ROCK RIVER HOSPICE AND HOME ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE SAUK VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Sauk Valley Foodbank ↗
- Who funds CGH Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds WHITESIDE COUNTY SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds STERLING ROCK FALLS COMMUNITY TRUST ↗
- Who funds Associated Colleges of Illinois Inc ↗
- Who funds Illinois Conservation Foundation ↗
- Who funds TIMBER LAKE PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds BEREA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CHRISTMAS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds Culver Educational 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: United Way of Whiteside County · William & Beverly Burkardt Family Foundation Nfp · Quad Cities Community Foundation · Sterling Rock Falls Community Trust · Kunes Family Foundation · Do It Best Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of Northern IL · Bergstrom Inc Charitable Foundation Xxxxx2008 · The Kjellstrom Family Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · United Way of Lee County Inc · Ralph J Baudhuin 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 Dillon 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.
- Save Ellis Island Inc — 10% 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 Dillon Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Dillon Foundation 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.