· Public charity
Illinois Stewardship Alliance
The purpose of the ILLINOIS STEWARDSHIP ALLIANCE is to promote the ecologically sustainable, economically viable, socially just, local food systems through policy development, advocacy, and education.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 16 grants below total $1,456,200 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,800,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $343,800 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 $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $44k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALLEN'S FARM QUALITY MEATS | $150,000 |
| FULLER PARK COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT | $150,000 |
| CENTRAL IL FARM FRESH ENTERPRISE DEV COOP | $148,000 |
| JO DAVIESS LOCAL FOODS | $140,000 |
| SOLA GRATIA FARM | $117,690 |
| DOWN AT THE FARMS LLC | $110,000 |
| DEMANGE FARMS | $106,000 |
| ST PAUL'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $105,000 |
| URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE INC | $95,000 |
| LEAF FOOD HUB | $79,887 |
| FUNKS GROVE HERITAGE FRUITS & GRAIN | $72,124 |
| JUST ROOTS | $70,000 |
| TULIP TREE GARDENS CO | $59,900 |
| ILLINOIS COUNTRY HARVEST | $26,900 |
| GARLIC BREATH FARM | $17,599 |
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 (FY24–24, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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 +175% since the first grant, against +146% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 0 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, 21% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
- DADown at the Farms LLC2× · 2020–2024 · $135k
- SGSOLA GRATIA FARM2× · 2020–2024 · $128k · revenue +175%
- LFLEAF FOOD HUB3× · 2020–2024 · $89k
Funded once
- IEILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL EDUCATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $80k · revenue +158%
- TFTERRIPIN FARMSone grant, 2020 · $20k
- LJLUCY JILL RENDLEMAN ALL SEASON'S FARMone grant, 2020 · $11k
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.
Green Chicago Restaurant Coalition's Guaranteed Green Sustainability Education Program educates foodservice operators about assessing the present state of their operation's environmental sustainability and helps them to develop a plan to…
Green city market is securing the future of food by deepening support for sustainable farmers, educating our community, and expanding access to locally-grown food.
Growing home is a nonprofit usda-certified organic farm and workforce development center, serving the greater englewood community of chicago through innovative paid employment training and nutritious, affordable produce. we believe…
Plant Chicago's mission is to cultivate local circular economies. We envision a paradigm shift in production, consumption, and waste driven at the local level, generating equity and economic opportunity for all residents.
The mission of heartlands conservancy is to empower and colaborate with the people of southern illinois to advance and protect the health of our distinctive communities and nationally significant natural and cultural resources.
The Organization facilitates and informs the development of and advocacy for responsible policies improving the food sovereignty of Chicago residents as they have power and control to determine culturally appropriate, nutritionally sound…
Friends of Sears Sunken Garden promotes and assists in the redesign, construction and maintenance of the historic Sears Sunken Garden located in the North Lawndale neighborhood of the City of Chicago for the use and enjoyment of the…
To develop knowledgeable and effective leaders to become policy and decision makers for the agricultural industry.
Sprout city farms collaborates with communities to pursue food justice by cultivating innovative, restorative, and educational farms. sprout city farms envisions a thriving and equitable food system supported by a network of farms and…
To increase access to fresh produce and educational opportunities and demonstrate ecological restoration through urban agriculture in the local neighborhood.
Educates stakeholders in illinois on environmental, economic, and social knowledge related to its grasslands.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Star Farm Chicago and the most unlike its peers is Palomares Social Justice Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 40 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 Fuller Park Community Development Corp ↗
- Who funds SOLA GRATIA FARM ↗
- Who funds URBAN GROWERS COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds JUST ROOTS JUST ROOTS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Palomares Social Justice Center ↗
- Who funds STAR FARM CHICAGO ↗
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: The Experimental Station · Grand Victoria Foundation · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · Forefront · Builders Vision Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Illinois Stewardship Alliance 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.