· Public charity
Illinois Action for Children
Illinois Action for Children uplifts children and all who care for them, advancing strong families and prosperous communities.
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.
The 1 grants below total $7,011 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $8,724,073 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $8,717,062 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Kiddie Academy Of Mount Prospect | $7,011 |
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 (FY18–23, $42k) 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +68% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 1 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k went to new ones.
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
- CPCONCORDIA PLACE7× · 2018–2025 · $24k · revenue +68%
- TLThe Learning Tree of East Elgin (Premier IL Elgin East3× · 2021–2023 · $17k
- SLSmart Learning Center A5× · 2017–2025 · $14k
Funded once
- LALittle Achievers4× · 2020–2023 · $8k
- RDRainbow Daycare4× · 2017–2020 · $6k
- HKHappy Kids Preschool & Daycare Ctr3× · 2017–2019 · $5k
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.
In 2001, Joyful Learning Educational Development Center (Joyful Learning EDC) was founded with a clear vision to provide accessible, high-quality childcare that meets the diverse needs of every child.
Provide christian based daycare and pre-school
Child care services and child preschool instruction
Day Care ServicesYour needs and your childs needs are our top priority Our focus is on development and communication skills of children We work closely with parents and our community
Our mission is to provide quality and safe childcare for the families in our community and provide our youngest learners with a positive start to their education journey.
The center provides quality care and education to children of working parents and is licensed to care for 44 children from ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.
Provide high quality child care and creative opportunities for growth, development, and lifelong learning in a nurturing, reliable, and affordable environment.
To improve the learning for the childrens in the community
Little Beginnings provides pre kindergarten and day care to children under 6 years of age. We believe that learning and playing are synonymous for the preschool age child. Young children learn best when they have an opportunity to practice…
Education and social developement center to provide preschool and after school care to children while promoting a child's emotional, educational and physical growth.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago Inc and the most unlike its peers is Seeds of Joy Enterprises Nfp. 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 25 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
35 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.
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.
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: Henry Booth House · Community Services for Children Inc · Women's Business Development Center · YWCA Metropolitan Chicago · Think Small · Early Learning Coalition of Broward County Inc · The Allstate Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Illinois Action for Children 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 Illinois Action for Children?
Find your warmest path to Illinois Action for Children 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.