· Private foundation
Enjoy a Better Life 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIBERTYVILLE COVENANT CHURCH | $5,000 |
| GLASA | $2,250 |
| LOVE INC | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| PADS LAKE COUNTY | $1,750 |
| JILL'S HOUSE | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN | $1,500 |
| FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN | $1,500 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $1,500 |
| ST JUDES | $1,500 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $1,500 |
| CRISTO REY ST MARTIN COLLEGE | $1,500 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $1,250 |
| GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK | $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 (FY20–21, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +74% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 1 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; $250 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
- FMFEED MY STARVING CHILDREN INC9× · 2017–2025 · $7k · revenue +83%
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK9× · 2017–2025 · $7k · revenue +43%
ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC5× · 2021–2025 · $6k · revenue +74%
Funded once
- ICINTERNATIONAL CONCIL OF FREINDSone grant, 2019 · $1k
- CCCOLLEEN CARES ORGANIZATIONone grant, 2023 · $500 · revenue -1%
- LLUMINOSone grant, 2019 · $500
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 Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare follows the mission of Endeavor Health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
We are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children. as the pediatric teaching facility for the northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, this commitment drives us to be a leader in: -pediatric health care delivery…
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…
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Chicago sun-times serves the public interest by strengthening the well-being of our local communities and our democracy through independent local journalism.
Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
Ronald mcdonald house charities of greater cincinnati offers a community of compassion, support and the comforts of home to families with critically ill children, steps away from the medical care they need.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
Naperville psychiatric ventures follows the mission of endeavor health to "help everyone in our communities be their best."
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Feed My Starving Children Inc and the most unlike its peers is Colleen Cares Organization. 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 37 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 4% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 47 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 FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey St Martin College Prep ↗
- Who funds PADS Lake County Inc ↗
- Who funds AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSN ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PARKINSON DISEASE ASSOC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation of the United States Inc ↗
- Who funds Adaptive Adventures ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO EXECUTIVE FORUM ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds NEW LIFE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds PADS OF ELGIN INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEEN CARES ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds LEMONS OF LOVE INC ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Enjoy a Better Life 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Enjoy a Better Life Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Enjoy a Better Life 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.