· Private foundation
Helen V Brach Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k252 grants · $666k
- $10k–50k286 grants · $4.4M
- $50k–250k15 grants · $900k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Loyola University of Chicago | $100,000 |
| Big Shoulders Fund | $100,000 |
| Lincoln Park Zoo | $75,000 |
| Misericordia | $75,000 |
| NIJC- National Immigrant Justice Ctr | $50,000 |
| Red Cloud Indian School | $50,000 |
| Dominican University | $50,000 |
| Catholic Extension Soc USA | $50,000 |
| Northern IL Food Bank | $50,000 |
| Greater Chicago Food Depository | $50,000 |
| Chicago Zoological Society Brookfield Zoo | $50,000 |
| St Ignatius College Prep | $50,000 |
| Access Living of Chicago | $50,000 |
| Catholic Theological Union | $50,000 |
| Catholic Charities Chicago | $50,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 84% 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 +16% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
472 repeat relationships — 337 still active in FY2025, 135 since wound down; 45 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $421k 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
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY5× · 2021–2025 · $325k · revenue +73%
- DUDOMINICAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $289k · revenue +22%
- DUDEPAUL UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $260k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- LULoyola University of Chgoone grant, 2021 · $104k
- SLSt Luke's Hospital Foundationone grant, 2022 · $100k
- NRNatural Resources Defense Cnclone grant, 2022 · $100k
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 psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
Arise chicago builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
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.
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…
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…
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 Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
House of Good Shepherd serves with love and compassion women and children affected by domestic violence by offering a safe place with opportunities for emotional, educational and spiritual growth, giving hope and continued support for a…
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
Executive Service Corps is the premier nonprofit consultancy that engages highly skilled professionals who use their experience and expertise to provide nonprofits with the consulting services they need to be successful. Our vision is to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Care for Real and the most unlike its peers is Enchanted Backpack. 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 39 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
337 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. 337 of the 656 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 Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING LAKEFRONT ↗
- Who funds Maryville Academy ↗
- Who funds Midtown-Metro Achievement Centers ↗
- Who funds THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL COLLEGE PREP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey St Martin College Prep ↗
- Who funds WINGS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Providence St Mel School ↗
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: Polk Bros Foundation Inc · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · WP & HB White Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The a Montgomery Ward Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Service Club of Chicago · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust
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 Helen V Brach 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.
- National Braille Press 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.