· Private foundation
Mills Family Charitable 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $303k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ISGAP - BREAKING THROUGH | $250,000 |
| JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY | $40,000 |
| JOHN HOWARD ASSOCIATION | $35,000 |
| ZACHARIAS CENTER | $33,000 |
| OUR PLACE OF NEW TRIER TOWNSHIP | $30,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| NORTH CHICAGO COMMUNITY PARTNERS | $25,000 |
| PAIDEIA US | $15,000 |
| CITIZENSHIP COUNTS | $15,000 |
| SGA YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES DONATION | $15,000 |
| FRENCHMAN'S CREEK CHARITIES FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| CHICAGO YOUTH PROGRAMS | $10,000 |
| ISRAEL TENNIS CENTER FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $77k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 78% 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 +45% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
64 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 48 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, 37% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $337k 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
- ZSZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER6× · 2017–2022 · $1.6M · revenue +27%
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO8× · 2017–2024 · $444k · revenue +13%
- JHJOHN HOWARD ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $210k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- OPOUR PLACE OF NEW TRIERone grant, 2024 · $50k
- SYSGA YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES DONATION (SCHOLARSHIP AND GUIDANCE)one grant, 2024 · $50k
- NUNORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY - HOLOCAUST EDUCATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $50k
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.
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For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Citizenship Counts. 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 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
118 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. 118 of the 166 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 ZACHARIAS SEXUAL ABUSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds JOHN HOWARD ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Lake Forest College ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds DIGESTIVE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE BOUND OPPORTUNITIES ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds CITIZENSHIP COUNTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds BLADDER CANCER ADVOCACY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds North Chicago Community Partners ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds FRENCHMANS CREEK CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OUR PLACE OF NEW TRIER TOWNSHIP ↗
- Who funds MEMORY CARE HOME SOLUTIONS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF LAKE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds ROBERT F KENNEDY CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds SPERTUS INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP ↗
- Who funds Jane Addams Senior Caucus ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SGA YOUTH & FAMILY SERVICES NFP ↗
- Who funds BRIARWOOD SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KING'S COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds PAIDEIA US INC ↗
- Who funds ALOHA MEDICAL MISSION ↗
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: Circle of Service Foundation · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · Vivo Foundation · Baxter International Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Lake County Community Foundation · Trustmark Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · AbbVie Foundation · Highland Park Community Foundation · Eleven Eleven 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 Mills Family Charitable 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.
- Sharsheret Inc — 4% of income from government
- Jupiter Medical Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- Food for the Poor 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.