· Private foundation
Edwardson Family 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $547k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $875k
- $250k+10 grants · $4.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RAVINIA FESTIVAL | $1,485,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | $555,000 |
| ADVANCE ILLINOIS | $340,343 |
| FAMILY PROMISE OF THE PALOUSE | $312,500 |
| BOCA GRANDE HEALTH CLINIC FOUNDATION | $265,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $250,000 |
| RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | $250,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $250,000 |
| INTER VARSITY CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL | $250,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $225,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES | $200,000 |
| BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION | $100,000 |
| CHICAGO HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $100,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK ZOO | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $707k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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 -7% for the ones you funded once.
89 repeat relationships — 47 still active in FY2025, 42 since wound down; 13 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $238k 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
University of Chicago7× · 2017–2025 · $3.0M · revenue +56%
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $2.1M · revenue +54%
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY7× · 2017–2023 · $1.3M · revenue +140%
Funded once
- RIREHAB INSTITUTE OF CHICAGOone grant, 2017 · $100k
- IFINTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF EVANGELICAL SERVICESone grant, 2017 · $50k
- CPChicago Parks Golf Allianceone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue -91%
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 chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
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…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
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 organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
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 Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Home & Aid Society of Ill and the most unlike its peers is Faraja Fund Foundation. 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 38 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
73 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. 73 of the 148 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE ILLINOIS NFP ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF EVANGELICAL STUDENTS USA INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BOCA GRANDE HEALTH CLINIC FNDTN INC ↗
- Who funds BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF THE PALOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds HARRY CHAPIN FOOD BANK OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME & AID SOCIETY OF ILL ↗
- Who funds The Island School Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Lawndale Educational and Regional Network Charter School ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds BOCA GRANDE WOMAN'S CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL SPASMODIC DYSPHONIA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CHICAGO ↗
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: The Chicago Community Trust · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Linda & Barry Allen Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Carbonari Family Foundation · Square One Foundation · The Canning Foundation · Patrick G and Shirley W Ryan Foundation · Lavin Family Foundation · Carol Bernick Family Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Lloyd a Fry 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 Edwardson Family 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Hermitage Artist Retreat Inc — 1% of income from government
- National Braille Press Inc — 0% of income from government
- Food for the Poor Inc — 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.