· Private foundation
Good Heart Work Smart Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k74 grants · $238k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $269k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $255k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OPRFHS Imagine Foundation | $1,002,000 |
| One Mind | $100,000 |
| Beat the Streets Chicago | $55,000 |
| The Neighborhood Bridge | $50,000 |
| Friends of the Oak Park Conservatory | $50,000 |
| OPRF Community Foundation | $31,000 |
| Dominican University | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $28,000 |
| Opportunity Knocks | $22,000 |
| Sarah's Inn | $16,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| Huskie Wrestling Family | $15,000 |
| Maywood Fine Arts | $11,000 |
| Collaboration for Early Childhood Care | $11,000 |
| Housing Forward | $10,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $676k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
150 repeat relationships — 77 still active in FY2024, 73 since wound down; 17 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $190k 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
- PFPARKS FOUNDATION OF OAK PARK7× · 2018–2024 · $3.7M · revenue +270% · 96% of their budget
- DUDOMINICAN UNIVERSITY7× · 2018–2024 · $385k · revenue +34%
- SISARAH'S INN7× · 2018–2024 · $360k · revenue +103%
Funded once
- OIOPRF IMAGINE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $150k
- RERepresentUs Education Fundone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -58%
- IWINFANT WELFARE SOCIETYone grant, 2019 · $59k
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 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.
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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
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…
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
To create a school that dramatically transforms the lives of k-8 students and prepares them for success in college and in life through: the delivery of a rigorous and personalized academic program, a focus on holistic education, and the…
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Moms Inc and the most unlike its peers is All in for Ethan 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 31 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
135 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. 135 of the 289 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 PARKS FOUNDATION OF OAK PARK ↗
- Who funds Begin In Circle Inc ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S INN ↗
- Who funds University of Dayton ↗
- Who funds BEAT THE STREETS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Equity Team Inc ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds OAK PARK EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds RepresentUs Education Fund ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE OAK PARK CONSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds YEMBA INC ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds HEPHZIBAH CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WEST SIDE CONNECTOR ↗
- Who funds READING BETWEEN THE LINES NFP ↗
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: Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Helen V Brach Foundation · Joseph R & Helen Shaker Family Foundation · Westlake Health Foundation · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · Carol Bernick Family Foundation · Fifth Third Chicagoland Foundation · Motorola Solutions 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 Good Heart Work Smart 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.
- Guitars Over Guns Organization Inc — 1% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Good Heart Work Smart 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.