· Public charity
Ft Cares Foundation
To provide monetary relief and other assistance to individuals and families who have healthcare, shelter, nutrition, education, and other similar needs, and to provide grants to other exempt organizations that provide assistance for such families and individuals.
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.
The 39 grants below total $604,470 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $867,517 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $263,047 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k11 grants · $64k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $466k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER | $74,500 |
| RAY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION | $38,000 |
| CLARE WOODS ACADEMY | $30,000 |
| THE OUTREACH HOUSE | $28,236 |
| SPECIAL SPACES ILLINOIS | $25,000 |
| WDSRA | $25,000 |
| BY THE HAND CLUB FOR KIDS | $25,000 |
| OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL | $24,000 |
| FOX VALLEY UNITED WAY | $20,000 |
| CHARITY WATER | $20,000 |
| OUTREACH MINISTRIES | $17,500 |
| TEAM RUBICON | $15,226 |
| DOODLEBUG WORKSHOP VOC TRAINING | $15,000 |
| NAMI OF COOK COUNTY NORTHERN SUBURB | $15,000 |
| MY HALF LOCAL KITCHEN | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $369k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 23% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Ft Cares Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 61% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 59% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 10 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $135k 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
- CKCASA KANE COUNTY7× · 2017–2024 · $168k · revenue +108%
- SSSPECIAL SPACES INC6× · 2019–2024 · $120k · revenue +78%
- BIBUILD INC6× · 2017–2022 · $110k · revenue +795%
Funded once
- PFPLAY FOR ALL FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2019 · $39k · revenue -6%
- AHAlmost Home Kidsgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +75%
UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS INCone grant, 2022 · $13k · revenue +9%
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.
Our mission is to solve hunger in central pennsylvania by ensuring that everyone struggling with hunger has access to enough wholesome food every day. we will achieve this bold goal with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and…
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
To provide comprehensive support services for individuals and families that are in need of everyday necessities due to insufficient financial resources or family instabilty. c.a.r.e.s. will offer food, clothing, job education and training…
The food bank for central & northeast missouri is a regional disaster and hunger relief network that acquires and distributes millions of meals each year to help neighbors get the food they need to thrive. (continued on schedule o)the…
To lead a unified effort for a hunger-free texas.
To foster a healthy and equitable community by helping vulnerable neighbors overcome food insecurity with dignity. with locations in edgewater and rogers park, cfr provides food, clothing, pet food, referral, and additional services with…
The greater chicago food depository is the nonprofit food bank serving cook county. our mission - is to end hunger. we believe food is a basic human right. to achieve our mission, we work in partnership with a network of community-based…
We strive to make aging easier through the development of a network of services for older persons designed to optimize the quality of their lives.
The mission of the regional food bank of oklahoma is to lead a network that provides nutritious food and pathways to self-sufficiency for people facing hunger. our vision is an oklahoma where no one goes hungry.
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Convoy of Hope and the most unlike its peers is One Million Wells Inc. 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 30 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) — 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 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.
84 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. 84 of the 85 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 CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL SPACES INC ↗
- Who funds BUILD INC ↗
- Who funds By The Hand Club For Kids ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF CENTRAL TEXAS INC ↗
- Who funds MOBILE LOAVES & FISHES INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CAL'S ALL-STAR ANGEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Central Texas Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds TRICITY FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds VOICES OF SEPTEMBER 11 INC ↗
- Who funds VINCARE SERVICES OF AUSTIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds DUPAGE CARE CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds DUPAGE PADS INC ↗
- Who funds THE OUTREACH HOUSE ↗
- Who funds BARTLETT LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RAY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES ↗
- Who funds Normal Moments Inc ↗
- Who funds PLAY FOR ALL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN DUPAGE SRA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OUTREACH COMMUNITY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MY HALF ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF DUPAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SUPPORT OUR TROOPS - AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds TFK Chicago Voyagers ↗
- Who funds COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES OF TRAVIS COUNTY ↗
- Who funds McDermott Center ↗
- Who funds DAN GIBBONS TURKEY TROT FOUNDATION NFP ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
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: The Dupage Community Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Topfer Family Foundation · Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · Northern Illinois Food Bank · Motorola Solutions Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Rich Foundation · Austin Community Foundation 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 Ft Cares 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Neads Inc — 1% of income from government
- Americares Foundation 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.