· Private foundation
Milhouse Charities
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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CULINARY CARE | $9,000 |
| PROJECT SYNCERE | $5,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| POLISHED PEBBLES | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST - 47TH AND COTTAGE PROJECT | $1,250 |
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 (FY19–19, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +40% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2023, 14 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- PSPROJECT SYNCERE6× · 2017–2023 · $69k · revenue +13%
- AAAEROSTAR AVION INSTITUTE2× · 2020–2021 · $39k · revenue +171%
- CCCulinary Care4× · 2019–2023 · $27k · revenue +107%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $85k
- RPResilience Partners NFPgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $15k · revenue +38%
- SCsouthwest chicago christian schoolone grant, 2019 · $15k
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.
To strengthen, enhance and enrich students interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) educational programs for elementary, middle and high school students in the Chicagoland area and assist eligible students in the…
The organization is a nonprofit after school program that uses the power of running to teach girls, 3rd-8th grade, critical social emotional learning skills.
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
Tutoring chicago delivers the power of education through one-to-one tutoring.
In furtherance of its charitable and educational goals, the Network's activities consist primarily of providing educational opportunities for its members and the public on issues related to the advancement of women in the workplace. As the…
To promote education and to create awareness, excitement, and opportunities among girls and young women to launch successful stem-related careers.
Aia chicago foundation invests in chicago's next generation of architectural change-makers by awarding scholarships, grants, and recognition.
To prepare children from underrepresented groups, African American and Latino, for careers in science and mathematics.
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
Impact Grants Chicago connects, engages and inspires women to improve the community of Chicago by collectively funding $100,000 grants to Chicago nonprofits that are dedicated to addressing the challenges facing the city.
Lumity and our partners seek to break down the barriers between stem-related businesses, chicagoland schools, and under-resourced chicagoland communities. we work with over 25 corporate partners and five high schools to provide teens with…
Support and promotion of arts education programs at chicago high school for the arts. the organization may also support other educational activities in furtherance of the arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girls 4 Science and the most unlike its peers is Culinary Care. 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 24 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 57 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 PROJECT SYNCERE ↗
- Who funds AEROSTAR AVION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Culinary Care ↗
- Who funds Resilience Partners NFP ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds Forest Preserve Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MATHCOUNTS Foundation ↗
- Who funds REFLECTION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EL VALOR CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Loretto Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds WESTERN SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS ↗
- Who funds ACE TECH ENDOWMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS 4 SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING LAKEFRONT ↗
- Who funds SPRINGBOARD TO SUCCESS INC ↗
- Who funds AKARAMA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH FOUNDATION ↗
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 · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Network for Good · American Online Giving 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 Milhouse Charities 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Milhouse Charities?
Find your warmest path to Milhouse Charities 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.