· Private foundation
M G Nelson Family 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 $10k22 grants · $77k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $486k
- $250k+1 grant · $380k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $380,000 |
| NAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN | $125,000 |
| KIDZEUM OF HEALTH & SCIENCE | $100,000 |
| COMPASS FOR KIDS | $100,000 |
| MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $60,500 |
| ARTIS NAPLES | $50,000 |
| NCH CENTER FOR PHILANTHROPY | $50,000 |
| HOLE IN THE WALL WILDLIFE FUND | $20,000 |
| CAPITOL ILLINI ANGEL FUND | $10,000 |
| SPRINGFIELD PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT 186 | $8,100 |
| CONTACT MINISTRIES | $6,000 |
| THE REES CARILLON SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| OPERATION HEALING FORCES | $5,000 |
| ST ALOYSIUS CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $213k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 26% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 M G Nelson Family 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, 80% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 71% — 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 +32% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 9 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
University of Illinois Foundation3× · 2023–2025 · $580k · revenue +37%- CFCompass for Kids Inc4× · 2022–2025 · $490k · revenue +120%
- NBNAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN INC8× · 2018–2025 · $428k · revenue +79%
Funded once
- NCNorthwest Community Hospitalone grant, 2020 · $108k · revenue +20%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $100k
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL ILLINOISgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue +25%
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.
Dedicated to advancing the art of ballet through premier education, performance, outreach and collaberation.
Foundry educational foundation strenghtens the metal casting industry by supporting unique partnerships among students, educators, and industry, helping today's students become tomorrow's leaders.
The mission of springfield college is to educate students in spirit, mind and body for leadership in service to others by building on a foundation of the college's humanics philosophy, academic excellence, service, and student success.…
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…
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.
To foster and encourage private philanthropic giving to improve communities of the Southern Illinois Region by connecting charitable donors with worthy causes and to build endowment funds that will support those worthy causes in perpetuity.
Volunteers of america of illinois partners with the people we serve to create transformational and lasting change in their lives through programs that support, empower, and transform.
To provide resources, advocacy and education for a diverse community of professionals and is dedicated to the highest standards of service in a changing real estate market.
To ensure a strong, talented, and diverse cpa profession in illinois by encouraging individuals to choose accounting as a career choice and become a cpa, and by supporting students, particularly those in need, in achieving the cpa.
(continued on schedule o)
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
To enhance the quality of the chicago metropolitan area's future leaders in whom the community will vest responsibility for its well being.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Seeing Eye Inc and the most unlike its peers is Chatham Friends of the Parks. 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 38 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% 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.
48 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. 48 of the 91 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 University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds Compass for Kids Inc ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds ARTIS-NAPLES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE LAND OF LINCOLN INC ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Springfield Art Association of Edwards Place ↗
- Who funds Northwest Community Hospital ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF SPRINGFIELD ↗
- Who funds MARINDA T OBEIRNE CRISIS NURSERY ↗
- Who funds BAY EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COPPER COIN BALLET COMPANY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PARENT PLACE ↗
- Who funds EDUCATIONAL CENTER FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Illinois ↗
- Who funds GAMMA THETA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The League Club Inc ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds SANGAMON VALLEY YOUTH SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds CONTACT MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR LEAGUE OF SPRINGFIELD INC ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEACREST SCHOOL 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: Levi Ray & Shoup Foundation · Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln Inc · Green Family Charitable Foundation · The Cellini Family Fund Trust Co William F Cellini Jr · United Way of Central Illinois Inc · Horace Mann Educators Foundation · Aa Harvey Foundation · James Orlandini Foundation · Collier Community Foundation Inc · Carmax Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 M G Nelson Family 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% of income from government
- Bay Education Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Guadalupe Center 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 M G Nelson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to M G Nelson Family 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.