· Private foundation
Fred J Brunner 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k72 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k5 grants · $330k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $80,000 |
| PILLARS-CONSTANCE MORRIS HOUSE | $75,000 |
| ASPIRE | $75,000 |
| SABAN CENTER | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT FUTURES | $50,000 |
| CHRIST THE KING COLLEGE PREP | $30,000 |
| CRISTO REY JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| MISERICORDIA HEART OF MERCY | $30,000 |
| ST PATRICK HIGH SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| SAN MIGUEL SCHOOL | $30,000 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $30,000 |
| ALLIANCE FRANCAIS DE CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| MOTHER MC AULEY HIGH SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% 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.
103 repeat relationships — 75 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 5 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $85k 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
- AOASPIRE OF ILLINOIS5× · 2020–2024 · $475k · revenue +49%
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK5× · 2020–2024 · $135k · revenue +8%
- SMSAN MIGUEL FEBRES CORDERO SCHOOL INC5× · 2020–2024 · $120k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- CTCRIMSON TIDE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $150k
- VVVALLEY VIEW SCHOOL INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $43k · revenue +36%
- SAST ANGELA SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
Provide community-based residential housing to adults with autism and/or severe developmental disabilities. also provide developmental training and other supports to this same population.
To provide residential and rehabilitation services to clients with mental illnesses
Chh honors every person's right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
The organization seeks to provide residential services for disabled adults and children, as well as behavioral health, regular work and supported employment services for these disabled individuals. additionally, developmental training and…
Committed to improving the quality of life for chicago's low-income elderly, housing opportunities and maintenance for the elderly (h.o.m.e.) helps seniors remain independent and part of their community by offering opportunities for…
Provide mental health services.
Operate homes for the aged and to conduct charitable and benevolent enterprises
It is the mission of sinnissippi centers, inc. to provide quality, coordinated and responsive behavioral healthcare services to individuals, families and the communities we serve.
Respond now connects those in need with health, hunger, and housing services in the chicago southland.
To operate facilities throughout illinois for the long-term care of developmentally disabled residents in our intermediate care facilities and community integrated living arrangements.
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.…
Innovative services, inc. (isi) cares for those with disabilities, helping them lead fulfilling lives with maximum independence. innovative's vision is to be the most trusted care provider for people with disabilities in wisconsin.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Support Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Meals On Wheels. 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 45 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 — 0.0% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 115 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.
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: WP & HB White Foundation · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · The Chicago Community Trust · Circle of Service Foundation · Helen V Brach Foundation · Blowitz-Ridgeway Foundation · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Dupage Community Foundation · Irish Fellowship Educational & Cultural Foundation · AbbVie 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 Fred J Brunner 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 Fred J Brunner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Fred J Brunner 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.