· Private foundation
Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k32 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $253k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $377k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHICAGO YOUTH CENTERS | $100,000 |
| CRISTO REY ST MARTIN COLLEGE PREP | $75,000 |
| REVOLUTION WORKSHOP | $51,000 |
| CHICAGO JESUIT ACADEMY | $50,500 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES | $50,000 |
| NOBLE NETWORK'S SUMMER OF A LIFETIME | $40,000 |
| BERNIE'S BOOK BANK | $33,000 |
| WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE | $27,500 |
| MOTHERS TRUST FOUNDATION | $26,500 |
| COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| JOSSELYN CENTER | $25,000 |
| WSIA EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $15,400 |
| BUILDING PEACEFUL BRIDGES | $15,000 |
| GAMMA LOTA SIGMA | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $285k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 61% 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.
63 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 16 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $32k 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
- CYChicago Youth Centers7× · 2017–2024 · $412k · revenue +59%
- CICOMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO7× · 2017–2024 · $400k · revenue +146%
- HFHOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES7× · 2017–2024 · $327k · revenue +69%
Funded once
- NSNORTHWESTERN SETTLEMENTone grant, 2020 · $25k
- NENAPSLO EDUCATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $15k
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANKone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -8%
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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
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.…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Providing and promoting waldorf education from early childhood through the twelfth grade and promoting waldorf education through community outreach.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The illinois network of charter schools (incs) advocates for the improvement of public education by leveraging the charter school model as a catalyst to transform lives and communities.
To Prepare Students for Success in Four-Year Colleges.
The Chicago Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that also serves as the strategic partner for the coordination of fundraising and charitable resources for the Chicago Park District.
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
Children's advocates for change was organized to improve the lives of children in illinois by bringing about significant changes public policies and programs for children through research, policy analysis and advocacy, public education and…
Tutoring chicago delivers the power of education through one-to-one tutoring.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Connections for the Homeless Inc and the most unlike its peers is Beef 4 Hunger. 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 32 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
100 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. 100 of the 153 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 Chicago Youth Centers ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds REVOLUTION WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey St Martin College Prep ↗
- Who funds WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NIGHT MINISTRY ↗
- Who funds Mothers Trust Foundation ↗
- Who funds BERNIE'S BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds GLENWOOD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds WSIA EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GAMMA IOTA SIGMA ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Operation Warm Inc ↗
- Who funds NOBLE NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds THE JOSSELYN CENTER NFP ↗
- Who funds IOTA COURT PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WINNETKANORTHFIELD ROTARY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Indian Hill Club Scholarship Foundation ↗
- Who funds WINNETKA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BUILDING PEACEFUL BRIDGES ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL COMMUNITY SKI CLUB ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Youth Guidance ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF WINNETKANORTHFIELD ↗
- Who funds GENEVA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW HAMPTON SCHOOL ↗
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 · Dr Scholl Foundation · Circle of Service Foundation · Tinberg Foundation · Frank Family Foundation · Sheila Reynolds Berner Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Helen V Brach Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Berlin Family Fund
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 Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund 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.
- Als Therapy Development Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
- Comfort Cases Inc — 0% 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 Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund?
Find your warmest path to Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund 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.