· Community foundation
Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation
Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation (The Foundation) is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization established in December 1999 to support programs & projects that improve energy efficiency, develop renewable resources, and preserve natural areas and wildlife habitats in Illinois.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k34 grants · $179k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $526k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $833k
- $250k+17 grants · $66M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Prairie State Conservation Coalition | $47,147,561 |
| County of Lake | $2,000,000 |
| Forest Preserve District of DuPage County | $2,000,000 |
| Heartland Community College | $2,000,000 |
| Homewood-Flossmoor CHSD #233 | $2,000,000 |
| Openlands | $1,529,452 |
| The Conservation Fund | $1,510,000 |
| Oak Park Residence Corporation | $1,400,000 |
| Academy For Global Citizenship | $1,200,000 |
| Forest Preserve District of Kane County | $1,074,150 |
| Severson Dells Educational Foundation | $833,035 |
| Academy For Global Citizenship | $800,000 |
| Park District of Oak Park | $711,463 |
| Nature Conservancy | $664,440 |
| The Conservation Fund | $449,075 |
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, $300k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 75% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 12% of Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 87% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
111 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2024, 77 since wound down; 13 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; $7.2M 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
- OOPENLANDS6× · 2017–2024 · $7.2M · revenue +166% · 27% of their budget
CITIZENS FOR CONSERVATION INC6× · 2018–2023 · $5.8M · revenue +85% · 48% of their budget
THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION4× · 2019–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +69%
Funded once
- CTCampton Townshipone grant, 2023 · $1.6M
- NSNorth Shore Sanitary Districtone grant, 2019 · $1.5M
- RIRock Island County Forest Preserve Districtone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
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 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.
The mission of the forest preserve foundation is to engage in protecting and restoring the treasured natural habitats within the forest preserve of cook county and to enhance outdoor experiences of all communities.we will do this by…
The foundation was formed to provide support, funding, and in-kind donations for educational programming and research that will benefit the illinois park and recreation association and citizens of illinois.
Friends of the parks inspires, equips, and mobilizes a diverse chicago to ensure an equitable park system for a healthy chicago.
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve engages in land and wildlife stewardship nature education and interpretive programs that support Edgewood Park and Natural Preserve. Our mission is to protect Edgewoods extraordinary biodiversity and…
The mission is to review, evaluate and identify the present and future open land needs of the community and to acquire and preserve natural areas, including habitats for endangered and threatened species, high quality natural communities,…
To beautify chicagoland's expressway system, its gateways andneighborhoods surrounding the expressways.
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves and the most unlike its peers is The Nature 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 32 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
121 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. 121 of the 292 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 PRAIRIE STATE CONSERVATION COALITION ↗
- Who funds OPENLANDS ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS FOR CONSERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds JO DAVIESS CONSERVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATURAL LAND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRAND PRAIRIE FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY FOR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OAK PARK RESIDENCE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE LAND CONSERVANCY OF MCHENRY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SEVERSON DELLS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION ↗
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: Openlands · The Morton Arboretum · Metropolitan Mayors Caucus · Hamill Family Foundation · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · Oberweiler Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · Grand Victoria Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Northwestern University · The Conservation Fund a Nonprofit Corporation
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 Clean Energy 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.
- Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc — 3% 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.