· Private foundation
John P and Dorothy S Illges Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 51% of JOHN P AND DOROTHY S ILLGES FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k11 grants · $200k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $476k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRUTH SPRING INC | $165,000 |
| NATIONAL INFANTRY FOUNDATION | $140,750 |
| ST LUKE SCHOOL | $120,000 |
| SAFEHOUSE MINISTRIES | $50,000 |
| WYNNTON NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORK | $25,000 |
| CALVARY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| WEST CENTRAL GEORGIA FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES | $25,000 |
| MERCYMED OF COLUMBUS | $25,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION | $20,000 |
| COLUMBUS HOSPICE | $20,000 |
| HISTORIC LINWOOD FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| HOUSE OF HEROES | $15,000 |
| YOUNG LIFE | $10,000 |
| COLUMBUS TECHNICAL COLLEGE | $10,000 |
| COLUMBUS REGIONAL TENNIS ASSOCIATION | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 99% of your 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 +2% since the first grant, against -9% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 7 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, 45% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $370k 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
- MOMERCYMED OF COLUMBUS INC ATTN TONY NGUYEN5× · 2019–2025 · $375k · revenue +114%
- FTFeeding the Valley Inc3× · 2019–2024 · $350k · revenue +843%
- NINATIONAL INFANTRY MUSEUM FOUNDATIONINC2× · 2017–2025 · $191k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- NINATIONAL INFANTRY MUSEUMone grant, 2024 · $186k
- BSBROOKSTONE SCHOOL INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +27%
- TCTeen Challengeone grant, 2017 · $40k
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 community shelter board is ending homelessness by creating collaborations, innovating solutions, and investing in quality programs.
Empowering people. saving wildlife.
To be a resource as a no-kill pet rescue service
To work towards the prevention and elimination of domestic and dating violence.
To serve the central ohio community with affordable, easy to access healthcare services.
Finding committed, permanent homes for companion animals in our community; measurably reducing companion animal overpopulation; educating and promoting humane values.
The organization pledges to provide quality programs, service, and technology to meet the unique physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the terminally ill and their families, and to educate the community about end of life issues.
Colony retirement homes iii is dedicated to providing affordable housing for seniors of low and moderate income.
Columbus alliance for battered women provides emergency shelter, security, crisis intervention, and advocacy for adult and child victims of domestic violence.
To inspire, gather, and activate followers of jesus to pursue the common good in our city.
To serve the needs of individuals suffering from life-limiting illness as well as to serve the individuals caring for them. to place emphasis on comfort and quality of life while fulfilling the physical, psychological, social and spiritual…
To advocate for people who are homless or near homeless, strategically planning for housing and services in the community, maximizing resources and collaboarating with community partners to implement housing and services within the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Easter Seals Southern Georgia Inc and the most unlike its peers is Historic Westville. 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 27 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 22% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 42 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 MERCYMED OF COLUMBUS INC ATTN TONY NGUYEN ↗
- Who funds Feeding the Valley Inc ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMBUS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MICAH'S PROMISE INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMBUS BOTANICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL INFANTRY MUSEUM FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds TRUTH SPRING INC ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS SOUTHERN GEORGIA INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC WESTVILLE ↗
- Who funds Columbus Housing Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds BROOKSTONE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds House of Heroes Chattahoochee ↗
- Who funds AUBURN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds VALLEY RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds WYNNTON NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds SPRINGER OPERA HOUSE ARTS ASSOCIATIONINC ↗
- Who funds WHOLESOME WAVE GEORGIA INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC LINWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS REGIONAL TENNIS ASSN INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
- Who funds PAWS Humane Inc ↗
- Who funds THE STEWART COMMUNITY HOME 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: Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley Inc · The Jordan Foundation Inc · Jw & Ethel I Woodruff Foundation Inc · Bradley-Turner Foundation Inc · Lockwood Partners Foundation Inc · Beloco Foundation Inc · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · The Daniel P Amos Family Foundation · Swift Illges Foundation Inc · The Cms Foundation Inc · Mildred Miller Fort Foundation Inc · The Woodruff Family Foundation 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 John P and Dorothy S Illges Foundation Inc 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 P and Dorothy S Illges Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to John P and Dorothy S Illges Foundation Inc 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.