· Private foundation
Elizabeth Hekman Gordon 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 $10k8 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $102k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $220k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CALVIN UNIVERSITY | $500,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $220,000 |
| CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN | $40,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS AMERICAN FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| ST CECILIA MUSIC CENTER | $15,000 |
| KENILWORTH UNION CHURCH | $12,000 |
| NEW LEAF RESOURCES | $10,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS | $5,100 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP | $5,000 |
| BRIGHT PROMISE FUND | $5,000 |
| ART IN ACTION | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO POLICE FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO PARKS FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| LYMPHOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
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, $760k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
28 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- CUCALVIN UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +6%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches9× · 2017–2025 · $755k · revenue +46%
- CHCHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY8× · 2017–2025 · $202k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- BHBEACON HILL AT EASTGATE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $25k
- CFCOMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF TETON VALLEY INCone grant, 2023 · $25k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF ANDREWS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $23k
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.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
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 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…
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
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…
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
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 provide the highest level of stewardship for university donors through professional management and oversight of the university of minnesota foundation's assets by creating a focused investment environment with clarity of purpose,…
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.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is St Andrews 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 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 60 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 CALVIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS AMERICAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEW LEAF RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds ST CECILIA MUSIC CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PRENTICE ↗
- Who funds ST ANDREWS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds Escape YFGK ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN APPLE FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING ↗
- Who funds Writers Theatre Inc ↗
- Who funds THE HONOR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds ART IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds Arnold Hall Inc ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO POLICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds North Channel Community Rowing ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME & AID SOCIETY OF ILL ↗
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: Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Chicago Community Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Network for Good · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Elizabeth Hekman Gordon 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.
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.