· Private foundation
Efs Foundation
Its FY2020 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 FY2017–2020.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $450k
- $50k–250k37 grants · $5.2M
- $250k+17 grants · $4.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $350,000 |
| YWCA - ELGIN | $301,250 |
| SUMMIT SCHOOL | $300,000 |
| ELGIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ELGIN | $300,000 |
| COMMUNITY CRISIS CENTER | $300,000 |
| CENTRO DE INFORMACION | $300,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB DUNDEE | $300,000 |
| SENIOR SERVICES ASSOCIATES INC | $265,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $255,000 |
| FISH FOOD PANTRY | $254,892 |
| FOOD FOR GREATER ELGIN | $250,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $250,000 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $250,000 |
| PADS OF ELGIN INC | $250,000 |
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 (FY17–20, $889k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 70% 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
78 repeat relationships — 63 still active in FY2020, 15 since wound down; 16 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (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 FY2020, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- CFCENTER FOR INFORMATION OF ELGIN (CENTRO DE INFORMACION)4× · 2017–2020 · $341k · revenue +448% · 32% of their budget
- CCCOMMUNITY CRISIS CENTER INC4× · 2017–2020 · $337k · revenue +87%
- TYThe Young Womens Christian Association Elgin Illinois4× · 2017–2020 · $330k · revenue +44%
Funded once
- RFROYAL FAMILY KIDS CAMPSone grant, 2017 · $17k
- TSTHE SALVATION ARMY - TEXAS FLOOD RELIEF FUNDone grant, 2017 · $10k
- NHNEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF CHICAGO INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $9k · revenue +123%
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 Elgin Area Chamber connects communities through engagement, advocacy, collaboration, and leadership.
Promote the health and independence of lake county, il, older adults
To enhance the quality of life of the older person, support theirindependence, encourage their involvement in the community, provide analternative to loneliness and isolation and provide a community focalpoint where older persons come…
Executive Service Corps is the premier nonprofit consultancy that engages highly skilled professionals who use their experience and expertise to provide nonprofits with the consulting services they need to be successful. Our vision is to…
To assist children who have been victims of abuse
Operate homes for the aged and to conduct charitable and benevolent enterprises
To provide quality, affordable health care for all, including those without the ability to pay.
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…
Enhancing lives by promoting the safe & efficient use of electricity.
The organization operates congregate and home delivered meal programs in suburban cook, grundy, will and kendall counties under contracts and grants with age option and ageguide (formerly northeastern illinois area agency on aging(neil)).…
Central illinois agency on aging believes in the independence and dignity of older persons, and that each older person should be empowered to exert control over their own life & have access to needed services. we do planning, program…
Seniors Assistance Center provides necessary services to senior citizens of unincorporated Norwood Park Township, and the villages of Norridge and Harwood Heights. These services include home delivered meals, information and assistance,…
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 Max McGraw Wildlife 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 43 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 106 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 CENTER FOR INFORMATION OF ELGIN (CENTRO DE INFORMACION) ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CRISIS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds The Young Womens Christian Association Elgin Illinois ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMIT SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ELGIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SENIOR SERVICES ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds FISH FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds PADS OF ELGIN INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR GREATER ELGIN INC ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY HANDS OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds Riverwoods Christian Center dba Fox Valley Christian Action ↗
- Who funds JUDSON UNIVERSITY A BAPTIST INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds ELGIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds GARY SINISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE ↗
- Who funds SUICIDE PREVENTION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds GAIL BORDEN PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ECKER CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY BEAUX ARTS ↗
- Who funds ELGIN ACADEMY ↗
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: Grand Victoria Foundation · Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · Seigle Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Harvey and Ethel Daeumer Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · Hoffer Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · United Way of Elgin Inc · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · The Dupage Community 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 Efs 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.
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 Efs Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Efs 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.