· Private foundation
Irish Woods Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k33 grants · $117k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $333k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $505k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LA LUMIERE SCHOOL | $200,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $130,000 |
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $75,000 |
| BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO | $50,000 |
| LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $50,000 |
| REBUILDING TOGETHER METRO CHICAGO | $40,000 |
| MISERCORDIA FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| ST BENEDICT SCHOOL ANNUAL FUND | $35,000 |
| AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS | $30,000 |
| ST IGNATIUS COLLEGE PREP | $30,000 |
| SHARE FOUNDATION WITH THE HANDICAPPED | $25,000 |
| WOLCOTT COLLEGE PREP | $20,000 |
| ST GILES SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| THE GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $15,000 |
| BEYOND HUNGER | $13,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $190k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 100% of Irish Woods 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, 65% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 0% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +28% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
75 repeat relationships — 52 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 2 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- RTREBUILDING TOGETHER METRO CHICAGO7× · 2019–2025 · $270k · revenue +249%
- ASAFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC7× · 2019–2025 · $205k · revenue +22%
- SFSHARE FOUNDATION WITH THE HANDICAPPED INC7× · 2019–2025 · $170k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- FCFXW CHILDREN AT THE CROSSROADSone grant, 2019 · $20k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $17k
- MSMARILLAC ST VINCENT FAMILY SERVICES INCone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +3%
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 public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Chicago sun-times serves the public interest by strengthening the well-being of our local communities and our democracy through independent local journalism.
To spark curiosity and creativity in all young children through positive, play-based learning experiences.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
To give members the ability to control their financial destiny by providing members with the means to satisfy their needs for financial services in a comfortable family-like environment. in doing so, the credit union strives to maintain…
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Blood Cancer United Inc. 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 51 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.
44 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. 44 of the 87 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 LA LUMIERE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REBUILDING TOGETHER METRO CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds AFTER SCHOOL MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE FOUNDATION WITH THE HANDICAPPED INC ↗
- Who funds BEYOND HUNGER ↗
- Who funds GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY RIZZO FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO NFP ↗
- Who funds Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PANDAS NETWORKORG ↗
- Who funds HOUSING FORWARD ↗
- Who funds WESTERN RESERVE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Kenneth C Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ↗
- Who funds THE ADLER PLANETARIUM ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S INN ↗
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 · AbbVie Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Dr Scholl Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Joseph R & Helen Shaker Family Foundation · Good Heart Work Smart Foundation · Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation · Motorola Solutions Foundation · Baxter International Foundation · Usg Foundation Inc · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago 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 Irish Woods 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.