· Private foundation
Fulk Family Foundation Inc
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $812k
- $50k–250k48 grants · $4.4M
- $250k+24 grants · $18M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $1,350,000 |
| NEBRASKA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,200,000 |
| HOPE CHICAGO INC | $1,137,500 |
| BISHOP NOLL INSTITUTE | $1,100,000 |
| COLLEGE OF LAKE COUNTY FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| CLEVELAND AVENUE FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION GROUP | $1,000,000 |
| BANDWITH MUSIC LTD | $1,000,000 |
| KIDS FIRST CHICAGO FOR EDUCATION | $1,000,000 |
| CAROLE ROBERTSON CENTER FOR LEARNING | $1,000,000 |
| ADLER PLANETARIUM | $1,000,000 |
| WAUKEGAN TO COLLEGE NFP | $1,000,000 |
| CENTERPOINTE INC | $1,000,000 |
| CHICAGO STATE FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| CENTERPOINTE INC | $650,000 |
| BISHOP NOLL INSTITUTE | $500,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $22.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
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 Fulk Family Foundation Inc’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.
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 +38% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
212 repeat relationships — 65 still active in FY2025, 147 since wound down; 19 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4.7M 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
University of Chicago7× · 2017–2023 · $33M · revenue +56%- UOUNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2025 · $24M · revenue +70%
Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago6× · 2017–2023 · $15M · revenue +60%
Funded once
- RURoosevelt Universityone grant, 2018 · $2.0M · revenue -6%
SCHOLARSHIP AMERICA INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2.0M · revenue +39%- CACLEVELAND AVENUE FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONone grant, 2021 · $1.0M · 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.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
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.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
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 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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kids First Chicago for Education and the most unlike its peers is Puerto Rico Neighborhood Housing Services Corp. 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 33 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% 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.
303 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. 303 of the 376 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEBANESE SYRIAN ASSOCIATED CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds Tabitha Inc ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds DIGESTIVE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER NORTHWEST INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN CHILDREN'S ZOO ↗
- Who funds GRANT PARK ORCHESTRAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds St Catherine Hospital Inc ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds College of Lake County Foundation ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF LINCOLN INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds PRESERVATION FOUNDATION OF THE LAKE COUNTY FOREST PRESERVES ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds City Colleges of Chicago 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: Robert R McCormick Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Vivo Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Lloyd a Fry Foundation · The Joyce Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Cme Group 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 Fulk Family Foundation Inc 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.
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Bottom Line 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Fulk Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Fulk Family Foundation Inc 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.