· Community foundation
Highland Park Community Foundation
Grants to charitable organizations
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 42 grants below total $958,525 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,025,075 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $66,550 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 $10k9 grants · $69k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $435k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $455k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Josselyn | $105,000 |
| Highwood Library & Community Center | $74,000 |
| North Suburban Legal Aid Clinic | $64,500 |
| Family Focus HP | $56,000 |
| Highland Park Community Early Learning Center | $52,500 |
| Tri-Con Child Care Center | $52,500 |
| The Art Center Highland Park | $50,000 |
| College Bound Opportunities | $40,000 |
| Southeast Lake County Faith in Action Volunteers | $31,000 |
| Zacharias Sexual Abuse Center | $30,000 |
| Highland Park Strings | $23,000 |
| Community Partners for Affordable Housing | $22,500 |
| Northern Illinois Food Bank | $22,000 |
| Highland Park High School | $19,550 |
| Pilgrim Chamber Players | $18,000 |
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, $1.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 24% 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.
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 +35% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 3 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k 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
- FOFRIENDS OF THE HIGHWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY6× · 2019–2024 · $371k · revenue +140%
- HPHIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY NURSERY SCHOOL8× · 2017–2024 · $358k · revenue +47%
- TJTHE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP6× · 2019–2024 · $344k · revenue +776%
Funded once
- JCJCFS Chicagoone grant, 2023 · $75k
- FFFenix Family Health Centergraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +89%
- RCROTARY CLUB OF HIGHLAND PARK- HIGHWOODone grant, 2021 · $12k · revenue -24%
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.
Administering an array of critical, intensive therapeutic interventions and/or facilitation services to emotionally and behaviorally disturbed clients for whom DCFS is legally responsible in order to stabilize their traditional or home of…
To enhance the quality of life for children and families by inspiring hope and empowerment and growth within all whom we serve.
To help people with developmental disabilities meet life's challenges and reach their highest potential.
Providing Social Services to Families including Child Care
Child Link provides foster care, family counseling, and therapy services to Chicago area adolescents who are at risk of homelessness. Child Link also refers adolescents to other agencies that are able to provide additional resources and…
The chicago high school for the arts (chiarts) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory…
To foster stronger communities by providing individuals with accessible, professional counseling and mental health care that empowers them to thrive
The chicago children's advocacy center unites public, private, and community partners to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of abused children.
To enrich the quality of life within the diverse population of northwest rockford.
To provide high-quality early learning and out-of-school time enrichment in under-resourced neighborhoods to holistically support children of all ages, their families, and their communities.
To provide academic & social support to inner-city chicago high school students. program provides scholarships, mentors & tutors to enable students to succeed in the high school of their choice.
To provide affordable community theater.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Focus and the most unlike its peers is The Roberti Community House. 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 27 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 58 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 FRIENDS OF THE HIGHWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND PARK COMMUNITY NURSERY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE OF LAKE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds TRI-CON CHILD CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH SUBURBAN LEGAL AID CLINIC ↗
- Who funds THE ART CENTER OF HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds FAMILY FOCUS LEGACY ↗
- Who funds ZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE BOUND OPPORTUNITIES ↗
- Who funds Lake County Partners In Aging ↗
- Who funds Family Focus ↗
- Who funds Jewish Child and Family Services ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND PARK STRINGS NFP ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING ↗
- Who funds Highland Park High School Parent Teacher Organization ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE OF GLENCOE ↗
- Who funds Focus on the Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds THE PILGRIM CHAMBER PLAYERS ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS-BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Glenkirk ↗
- Who funds Fenix Family Health Center ↗
- Who funds KIDS RANK ↗
- Who funds COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY HOUSING INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Gratitude Generation Inc ↗
- Who funds The Roberti Community House ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds CURT'S CAFE ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SERVICES OF GLENVIEWNORTHBROOK ↗
- Who funds CANCER WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Midwest Young Artists ↗
- Who funds LESTER AND ROSALIE ANIXTER CENTER ↗
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: First Bank Chicago Foundation · Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park · The Lake County Community Foundation · YEA Highland Park Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Leva Family Foundation · John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · AbbVie Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Give N Kind · United Way of Lake County Inc · Vivo 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 Highland Park Community 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.
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.