· Private foundation
Helmsmanshipinc
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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k15 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OCEANS VOYAGE INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| 1130 NAUTICAL DONATIONS | $10,000 |
| SE SIDE EXP INCUBATOR | $8,750 |
| VAR MISC ORGANIZED CHARITIES | $6,105 |
| MOUNT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| WIREPOINTS | $5,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $4,000 |
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $4,000 |
| ST PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCH | $3,500 |
| ST IGNATIUS HIGH SCHOOL | $3,500 |
| CHICAGO POLICE SAILING ASSOC | $3,000 |
| CHICAGO TRAINING CENTER | $3,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER | $3,000 |
| RECOVERY ON WATER | $2,500 |
| CANAL CORRIDOR ASSOCIATION | $2,500 |
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 (FY19–24, $9k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 15 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, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- OVOcean Voyages Institute4× · 2019–2024 · $25k · revenue +27%
- CYCHICAGO YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION5× · 2019–2023 · $15k · revenue +287%
- WCWIREPOINTS CORP5× · 2019–2024 · $11k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- PUPRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +12%
- CACONSTANCE ABBEY INCone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue 0%
- GPGeorge Pocock Rowing Foundationone grant, 2021 · $2k · revenue -10%
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.
Chicago yacht club's mission is to encourage and promote the comingling of members through yachting by providing recreation activities, classes and regattas for members and their guests.
The Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
To promote foster and support both sweep rowing and sculling to youth and adults in the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area and to educate coach and train the general public in skills relating to rowing and in-water safety.
Sailing instruction
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…
The chicago convention and tourism bureau is the premier sales and marketing organization that promotes chicago's world-class assets to global leisure travel and convention business to ensure the economic vitality of the city and its…
The chicago club is and shall continue to be the premier club in the city of chicago, serving the business, civic, educational, and philanthropic leaders, and their families, by providing a private club with outstanding dining, service,…
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of the Chicago River and the most unlike its peers is Ocean Voyages Institute. 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 42 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 6% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
28 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 28 of the 50 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 Ocean Voyages Institute ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MARITIME ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO MARITIME MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds CANAL CORRIDOR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YACHT CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds WIREPOINTS CORP ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CHICAGO PARENTS & FRIENDS INC ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY ON WATER INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHICAGO RIVER ↗
- Who funds RESPIRATORY HEALTH ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Chicago Training Center ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds CONSTANCE ABBEY INC ↗
- Who funds George Pocock Rowing Foundation ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds JACKSON PARK YACHT CLUB ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE PARKS ↗
- Who funds NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN PLANNING COUNCIL ↗
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: Dr Scholl Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Stone Barrett Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Canning Foundation · The Joyce Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Tides Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Helmsmanshipinc 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 Helmsmanshipinc?
Find your warmest path to Helmsmanshipinc 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.