· Public charity
Impact Grants Chicago
Impact Grants Chicago connects, engages and inspires women to improve the community of Chicago by collectively funding $100,000 grants to Chicago nonprofits that are dedicated to addressing the challenges facing the city.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k3 grants · $90k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $400k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Peoples Music School | $100,000 |
| Restoring the Path-Crusher Cl | $100,000 |
| Ignite | $100,000 |
| The Bloc | $100,000 |
| VOCEL | $30,000 |
| Esperanza Community Services | $30,000 |
| Northside Housing and Support | $30,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $900k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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 +55% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 6 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, 6% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $460k 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
- CFCONNECTIONS FOR ABUSED WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN2× · 2020–2024 · $200k · revenue +74%
- SLSt Leonard's Ministries2× · 2020–2024 · $130k · revenue +62%
- LCLAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER2× · 2020–2023 · $130k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- CYCHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS INCone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -28%
- RRESILIENCEone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -4%
- FOFRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN - CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +64%
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 Coalition to End Homelessness (CCH) builds community power and advances racial equity through organizing, advocacy, legal assistance, and education to prevent and end homelessness because housing is a human right.
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
Serving recently arrived migrants and asylum seekers in the Chicagoland area and is committed to upholding the dignity and human rights of immigrants.
Providing academic support to children experiencing homelessness in Chicago and providing resources and services to families experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
Chicago Workers' Collaborative's mission is to promote full employment and equality for the lowest wage-earners, primarily temporary staffing workers, in the Chicago region through leadership and skills training, critical assistance and…
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
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…
Latino Union works to defend the rights and dignity of contingent workers, including the right to immigrate, work, live free of oppression and violence, and provide for oneself and one's family.
Respond now connects those in need with health, hunger, and housing services in the chicago southland.
Erie neighborhood house provides the most comprehensive support to immigrant and low-income families in chicago. our mission is to empower our communitylatinx immigrants alongside individuals and families of all backgroundsthrough…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Care for Real and the most unlike its peers is North Side Housing and Supportive Services. 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 38 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
46 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.
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR ABUSED WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds St Leonard's Ministries ↗
- Who funds LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds RESILIENCE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN - CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO FURNITURE BANK ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES AND MAINTENANCE FOR THE ELDERLY INC ↗
- Who funds COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES OF COOK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds MARGARETS VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds DEBORAH'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds THE BLOC ↗
- Who funds IGNITE ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO SURVIVORS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON PANTRY ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds REVOLUTION WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds RESTORING THE PATH ↗
- Who funds EL HOGAR DEL NINO ↗
- Who funds I Grow Chicago NFP ↗
- Who funds The People's Music School ↗
- Who funds KALEIDOSCOPE INC ↗
- Who funds FACING FORWARD TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION ↗
- Who funds GROWING HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Vocel Viewing our Children as Emerging Leaders ↗
- Who funds OLD IRVING PARK COMMUNITY CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds Renaissance Social Services Inc ↗
- Who funds ESPERANZA COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds NORTH SIDE HOUSING AND SUPPORTIVE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Law Center for Better Housing ↗
- Who funds Greater Chicago Legal Clinic ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCAN OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds CARE FOR REAL ↗
- Who funds BELOVED COMMUNITY FAMILY WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds NAMI 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 Chicago Community Trust · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Circle of Service Foundation · Maurice & Henry Freund Charitable Foundation · WP & HB White Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Cuore e Mani Foundation · Helen V Brach Foundation · All Chicago Making Homelessness History
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 Impact Grants Chicago 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.