· Private foundation
John & Susan Dewan Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k23 grants · $98k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $63k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $118k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $117,500 |
| Olancho Aid Foundation | $18,500 |
| KIWIMBI INTERNATIONAL | $17,000 |
| JOSEPHINUM ACADEMY of the Sacred Heart | $17,000 |
| OUR LADY OF TEPEYAC HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| Jesuit Refugee Service USA | $7,010 |
| COOPERATIVE FOR EDUCATION | $6,000 |
| INKULULEKO | $5,183 |
| CREA | $5,000 |
| SAN MIGUEL SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| CARAVAN TO CLASS | $5,000 |
| Adoption Center of Illinois | $5,000 |
| SUNSAR MAYA | $5,000 |
| GRACIA INC | $5,000 |
| New Moms | $5,000 |
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, $133k) 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 13% of John & Susan Dewan 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, 82% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 74% — 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 +56% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
71 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 44 since wound down; 1 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; $5k 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
- SVSpark Ventures6× · 2020–2025 · $51k · revenue +51%
- KIKIWIMBI INTERNATIONALA NEW JERSEY NON PROFIT CORPORATION6× · 2020–2025 · $38k · revenue +145%
- NMNEW MOMS INC6× · 2018–2025 · $36k · revenue +79%
Funded once
- JAJOSEPHINUM ACADEMYone grant, 2022 · $45k
- KBKINO BORDER INITIATIVE INCone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue 0%
- SNSt Nicholas Cathedral Schoolone grant, 2024 · $10k
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.
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…
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.
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.
We open doors to improve lives and uplift communities through educational, economic and support services.
To disrupt cycles of poverty with dignified transitional housing that hoslistically connects young men to opportunities that create and sustain personal, professional and relational growth.
Enlace Chicago convenes, organizes, and builds the capacity of little village stakeholders to confront systemic inequities and barriers to economic and social access. Enlace Chicago is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives…
Providing academic support to children experiencing homelessness in Chicago and providing resources and services to families experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
House of Good Shepherd serves with love and compassion women and children affected by domestic violence by offering a safe place with opportunities for emotional, educational and spiritual growth, giving hope and continued support for a…
Respond now connects those in need with health, hunger, and housing services in the chicago southland.
Renaissance Social Services (RSSI) is a unique organization that connects those in need with housing that is safe, quality and affordable. After helping clients attain housing RSSI provides them with comprehensive, flexible, client focused…
Care for orphaned, abandoned, malnourished and developmentally disabled children in guatemala, c.a.
Upaya Social Ventures' mission is to create dignified jobs for people living in extreme poverty by building scalable businesses with investment and consulting support.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Paramedics for Children Inc. 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 34 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 107 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 Spark Ventures ↗
- Who funds KIWIMBI INTERNATIONALA NEW JERSEY NON PROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds Caravan to Class ↗
- Who funds Paramedics For Children Inc ↗
- Who funds STRATEGIES FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds Un Mundo ↗
- Who funds COOPERATIVE FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds GROWING HOME INC ↗
- Who funds SAN MIGUEL FEBRES CORDERO SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCAN OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds OLANCHO AID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HARBOUR INC ↗
- Who funds CONCERN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Inspiration Corporation ↗
- Who funds DEBORAH'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds INKULULEKO INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CARE FOR FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds SISTERHOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCANS FOR THE WORLD ↗
- Who funds HEALING ART MISSIONS ↗
- Who funds SARAH'S CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds Carmen Pampa Fund ↗
- Who funds CONNECTIONS FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds SUNSAR MAYA INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
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: Helen V Brach Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · WP & HB White Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Blowitz-Ridgeway Foundation · All Chicago Making Homelessness History · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Greater Chicago Food Depository · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Patrick and Anna M Cudahy Fund · Reva and David Logan Foundation · Robert R McCormick 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 John & Susan Dewan 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.
- One Family Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to John & Susan Dewan Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John & Susan Dewan Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.