· Public charity
Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago
Juf provides critical resources that bring food, refuge, health care, education and emergency assistance to over 500,000 chicagoans of all faiths and millions of jews in israel and around the world, funding a network of 100+ agencies, schools, and programs.
Read this first · the figures below need context
96% of Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago’s FY2025 grant dollars went to The Jewish Federations Of North America Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 37 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $523k
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+5 grants · $105M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Jewish Federations of North America | $57,188,651 |
| Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago | $44,382,915 |
| American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee | $2,570,000 |
| The Giving Back Fund | $1,000,000 |
| The Ark | $291,257 |
| Jewish Child & Family Services | $243,364 |
| American Friends of Sheba Medical Center | $232,600 |
| Mt Sinai Hospital Medical CenterSinai Health System | $165,000 |
| Hebrew Theological College | $150,125 |
| Shalva | $143,419 |
| Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County | $125,000 |
| CJE SeniorLife | $120,113 |
| Ida Crown Jewish Academy | $100,000 |
| Arie Crown Hebrew Day School | $100,000 |
| Friends of the Israel Defense Forces | $65,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $7.6M) 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.
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.
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 +19% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 10 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $391k 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
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc8× · 2017–2025 · $4.9M · revenue +24%- JCJewish Child and Family Services8× · 2017–2025 · $2.6M · revenue +43%
- JCJewish Community Centers of Chicago8× · 2017–2025 · $1.8M · revenue +20%
Funded once
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOMone grant, 2024 · $2.1M · revenue 0%
- TQThe Quad Project Incone grant, 2024 · $1.0M · 49% of their budget
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF SOROKA MEDICAL CENTER INCone grant, 2024 · $300k · revenue 0%
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 jewish agency binds jews across ideologies and civilizations together in a worldwide jewish family with israel at its center. it provides the global framework for aliyah, ensures global jewish safety, strengthens jewish identity and…
Connect israel is a life-long program that aims to strengthen the gap between american jews and israelis through business, creative teamwork, and developing personal relationships.
To prepare students for the rabbinate and to issue the traditional certificate of ordination in connection therewith. the seminary is authorized to confer the degree of master of hebrew literature (m.h.l.), doctor of hebrew literature…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Project Aid & Rescue 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 43 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
73 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. 73 of the 89 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 THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds Jewish Child and Family Services ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR JEWISH ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds THE ARK ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF NATAL INC ↗
- Who funds MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE GIVING BACK FUND ↗
- Who funds The Quad Project Inc ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF SOUTH PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF SOROKA MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SHALVA INC ↗
- Who funds THE WURTMAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF SHEBA MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MAOT CHITIM OF GREATER CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHESED FUND ↗
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH AGENCY FOR ISRAEL - NORTH AMERICAN COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ACANI INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ELNET ↗
- Who funds THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF SARASOTA-MANATEE INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF DELAWARE INC ↗
- Who funds Selfreliance Association ↗
- Who funds Northwestern Memorial HealthCare ↗
- Who funds CAMP MOSHAVA OF WILD ROSE INC ↗
- Who funds HILLEL THE FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMPUS LIFE ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Bitton Family Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Crown Family Foundation · Aj & Sl Stern Family Foundation · Milwaukee Jewish Federation Inc · The Novick Family Foundation · Bellows Family Foundation · Elliott and Ronni Charitable Fdn · The Harold Grinspoon Foundation · Circle of Service 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 Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan 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.
- Jewish Federation of Delaware Inc — 6% 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.