· Private foundation
Empty Bowls Cook County
Its FY2023 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 FY2021–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Great Lunch | $6,000 |
| Birch Grove Community School | $5,000 |
| Birch Grove Community School | $5,000 |
| Ruby's Pantry | $5,000 |
| North Point | $5,000 |
| Step-Up ChildCare | $5,000 |
| YMCA | $5,000 |
| YMCA | $5,000 |
| Oshki Ogimaag Community School | $5,000 |
| Empty Bowls CC-MN | $4,671 |
| YMCA | $4,000 |
| Cook County Community Education | $4,000 |
| Cook County Council on Aging | $3,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| Cooperation Station Day Care | $3,000 |
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 (FY21–23, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
16 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2023, 1 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2023, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- BGBIRCH GROVE COMMUNITY SCHOOL3× · 2021–2023 · $17k · revenue +56%
- VPViolence Prevention Center3× · 2021–2023 · $4k · revenue +99%
- SMSAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN CLINIC INC2× · 2022–2023 · $3k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- ZLZOAR LUTHERAN CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $5k
- WFWee Folk Child Careone grant, 2021 · $3k
- NPNorthwoods Playschool LLCone grant, 2021 · $2k
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.
Chicago Hope runs a food pantry twice a week that serves over 100 families. The organization is working toward the furtherance of wrap around services.
To provide at least 2 days of food to needy families and people.
To expand equitable health care and healthy living in Cook County and champion solutions through funding, education and advocacy.
Public service community radio station.
To provide congregate meals, home delivered meals, transportation, and information and assistance to senior citizens of washington county, illinois.
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)).…
Provide home delivered meals and congregated meals for area senior citizens
The forest preserves of cook county are an integral part of our community and contribute to our quality of life. our forest preserves play an important role in helping to protect water and air quality, as well as habitat for wildlife. they…
The North Scott Food Pantry provides food for people in need. Clients receive enough food for about one week and are allowed to get food every 28 days. There were 721 visits to our food pantry in 2025.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Care Partners of Cook County and the most unlike its peers is Great Lunch. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 32 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 BIRCH GROVE COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds GREAT LUNCH ↗
- Who funds COOK COUNTY COUNCIL ON AGING ↗
- Who funds NORTH POINT INC ↗
- Who funds Ruby's Heart ↗
- Who funds Empty Bowls CC-MN ↗
- Who funds Violence Prevention Center ↗
- Who funds SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds Care Partners of Cook County ↗
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: Lloyd K Johnson Foundation · Northland Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Amazonsmile 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 Empty Bowls Cook County 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 Empty Bowls Cook County?
Find your warmest path to Empty Bowls Cook County 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.