· Private foundation
First Bank Chicago Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k131 grants · $222k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $230k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY PARTNERS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING | $34,690 |
| HARPER COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $29,050 |
| IL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM AND EDUCATION CENTER | $25,000 |
| BERNIE'S BOOK BANK | $21,250 |
| LES TURNER ALS FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| HONEST GAME FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| DISTRICT 112 EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| COLLEGE BOUND OPPORTUNITIES | $12,500 |
| HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $11,250 |
| SALT SERVICE AND LEARNING TOGETHER | $10,750 |
| JOSSELYN CENTER | $10,550 |
| THE ARK | $10,050 |
| FAMILY FOCUS | $10,000 |
| COLLEGE OF LAKE COUNTY FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO | $7,500 |
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 (FY21–24, $186k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 75% 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 +27% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
139 repeat relationships — 100 still active in FY2024, 39 since wound down; 42 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $52k 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
- BBBERNIE'S BOOK BANK4× · 2021–2024 · $96k · revenue +19%
- NHNEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF CHICAGO INC3× · 2021–2023 · $48k · revenue +28%
- CBCOLLEGE BOUND OPPORTUNITIES4× · 2021–2024 · $47k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- SISPECTRIOS INSTITUTE FOR LOW VISIONone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -12%
CASA LAKE COUNTY INCone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +1%- DCDEPAUL COLLEGE PREP FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +99%
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.
Nourishing hope provides food, mental health support, and social services to help all our neighbors thrive.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
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…
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.
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
The chicagoland chamber of commerce combines the power of people, with our legacy of leadership and business advocacy, to drive a dynamic economy. we focus on delivering value for our members, making chicagoland a world-class place to live…
Providing academic support to children experiencing homelessness in Chicago and providing resources and services to families experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
The mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
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.
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Babl Inc. 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 30 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% 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.
193 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. 193 of the 280 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Honest Game Foundation ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE BOUND OPPORTUNITIES ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF HIGHLAND PARK- HIGHWOOD ↗
- Who funds FAMILY FOCUS LEGACY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Club of Lake County ↗
- Who funds NORTH SUBURBAN YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TRI-CON CHILD CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds College of Lake County Foundation ↗
- Who funds ALLIES FOR COMMUNITY BUSINESS INC ↗
- Who funds TOTALLINK TO COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLDS ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ASPIRE OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds RENEW COMMUNITIES NFP ↗
- Who funds SKOKIE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds MORAINE TOWNSHIP CHARITABLE FUND CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds NILES TOWNSHIP FOOD PANTRY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INVESTMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BACK 2 SCHOOL AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Beyond Sports Foundation ↗
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: Circle of Service Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · The Lake County Community Foundation · Baxter International Foundation · Highland Park Community Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Give N Kind · AbbVie Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Robert R McCormick 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 First Bank Chicago 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
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.