· Private foundation
John F Smiekel 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $32,500 |
| DIRECT RELIEF | $32,500 |
| CITIZENS CONCERNED FOR THE HOMELESS | $32,500 |
| GRANDFATHER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| CODEART | $16,250 |
| NOURISHING HOPE | $16,250 |
| BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST | $15,000 |
| AVERY COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY | $15,000 |
| YELLOWSTONE FOREVER | $12,500 |
| JEREMY ELLIOT SCHOLARSHIP FDN | $12,500 |
| WOMENS' AUXILIARY OF PIEDMONT HOSP | $10,000 |
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, $119k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 92% 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 +20% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 4 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, 64% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
DIRECT RELIEF6× · 2020–2025 · $224k · revenue +20%- JEJEREMY ELLIOTT SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION7× · 2019–2025 · $93k · revenue +44% · 50% of their budget
- RWREVOLUTION WORKSHOP4× · 2021–2024 · $80k · revenue +146%
Funded once
- KFKNOTHOLE FOUNDATION KNOTHOLE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $32k · revenue +34%
- ABANITA BORG INST FOR WOMEN AND TECHone grant, 2022 · $29k
- DWDIGS WITH DIGNITY CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $21k · revenue +121%
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 mission of goodwill is to create opportunities for individuals with barriers to enhance their lives. barriers include physical or mental disabilities, lack of education and job preparation, socio-economic disadvantages, and others.…
Goodwill provides exceptional opportunities for people facing employment barriers.
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
Goodwill's mission is to empower individuals, strengthen families, and inspire communities through job skills training and work placement opportunities with a multi-generational approach focused on removing barriers.
Goodwill's mission is to empower individuals, strengthen families, and inspire communities through job skills training and work placement opportunities with a multi-generational approach focused on removing barriers.
Strive to improve the health and well being of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and other medically vulnerable populations by providing quality accessable, affordable, and culturally responsive health care within the community we serve.
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
Reducing the barriers and burdens that families in poverty experience by increasing access to essential needs.
The neighborhood reinvestment corporation (d.b.a neighborworks america) is a congressionally chartered public non-profit corporation that creates opportunities for people to live in affordable homes, improve their lives, and strengthen…
Affordable home ownership
Empowering families and individuals experiencing homelessness to build a future filled with dignity, opportunity, and lasting solutions.
To provide decent, safe and sanitary housing that is affordable to low and moderate-income persons and to stabilize and strengthen communities by improving the local housing stock. the corporation shall administer programs that revitalize…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girls Who Code Inc and the most unlike its peers is Jeremy Elliott Scholarship Foundation. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 34 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 DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds AVERY COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds JEREMY ELLIOTT SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds APPALACHIAN REGIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds REVOLUTION WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds Grandfather Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS CONCERNED FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING FORWARD ↗
- Who funds MITCHELL COUNTY ANIMAL RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds CODEART INC ↗
- Who funds Pebble Beach Company Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMPASSIONATE COMMUNITIES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds HEPHZIBAH CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds KNOTHOLE FOUNDATION KNOTHOLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NOURISHING HOPE ↗
- Who funds DIGS WITH DIGNITY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Queens University of Charlotte ↗
- Who funds THE CARING PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Public Interest Law Initiative ↗
- Who funds ERIE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE ↗
- Who funds GIRLS WHO CODE INC ↗
- Who funds BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE FOREVER ↗
- Who funds Agape Community Center ↗
- Who funds SWIFTSURE RANCH THERAPEUTIC EQUESTRIAN CENTER 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: John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Endowment 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 F Smiekel 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.
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How do I get to John F Smiekel Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John F Smiekel 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.