· Public charity
Openlands
OPENLANDS protects the natural and open spaces of northeastern illinois and the surrounding region to ensure cleaner air and water, protect natural habitats and wildlife, and help balance and enrich our lives.OPENLANDS' vision for the region is a landscape that includes a vast network of land and water trails, tree-lined streets, and…
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.
The 21 grants below total $246,854 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $283,913 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $37,059 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $160k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $56k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE | $56,474 |
| THE FORGE CHARITABLE ADVENTURES NFP | $10,000 |
| CITY OF PROSPECT HEIGHTS | $10,000 |
| YOUNG MEN'S EDUCATIONAL NETWORK | $10,000 |
| VILLAGE OF PORT BARRINGTON | $10,000 |
| VILLAGE OF SOUTH HOLLAND | $10,000 |
| BEE HAVEN | $10,000 |
| VILLAGE OF BOLINGBROOK | $10,000 |
| HISTORY CENTER OF LAKE FOREST LAKE BLUFF | $10,000 |
| FOX VALLEY PARK DISTRICT | $10,000 |
| RIVERDALE PARK DISTRICT | $10,000 |
| LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| VILLAGE OF FRANKLIN PARK | $10,000 |
| NILES TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT | $10,000 |
| FOREST PRESERVE 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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 32% of your 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.
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 47% of Openlands’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, 100% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 52% — 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.
16 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 11 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, 37% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $154k 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
- HSHealthy Schools Campaign5× · 2017–2023 · $281k · revenue -4%
- SCSIERRA CLUB4× · 2017–2021 · $80k · revenue -41%
- TWTHE WETLANDS INITIATIVE2× · 2023–2024 · $66k · revenue +75%
Funded once
- LCLALE COUNTY FOREST PRESERVEone grant, 2023 · $1.4M
- KIKleo Inc dba ClassWalletone grant, 2023 · $15k
- IAIllinois Arborist Association Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $12k · revenue +64%
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.
Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
To restore, preserve, and protect natural areas in illinois by acquiring land containing significant natural communities and to provide stewardship to restore and maintain the native ecosystems in these areas.
To protect and restore the ecological health of forest park and marquam nature park, maintain and enhance their extensive trails networks, promote equitable access, and inspire diverse community appreciation and stewardship of these iconic…
Friends of Sears Sunken Garden promotes and assists in the redesign, construction and maintenance of the historic Sears Sunken Garden located in the North Lawndale neighborhood of the City of Chicago for the use and enjoyment of the…
The primary program of the lincoln park conservancy is to grow a sustainable organic garden.
Advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address wisconsin's greatest conservation challenges.
To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.
The mission of heartlands conservancy is to empower and colaborate with the people of southern illinois to advance and protect the health of our distinctive communities and nationally significant natural and cultural resources.
Plant Chicago's mission is to cultivate local circular economies. We envision a paradigm shift in production, consumption, and waste driven at the local level, generating equity and economic opportunity for all residents.
The mission of the lincoln park conservancy is to preserve and enhance the inspiring beauty of chicago's largest and most visited park for current and future generations. we believe that beauty matters. that it has the transformative power…
To promote the perpetuation and appreciation of native flora and fauna of illinois and the habitats that support them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lake Forest Open Lands Association and the most unlike its peers is Grand Victoria Foundation. 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 22 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 132 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 Healthy Schools Campaign ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Illinois Arborist Association Inc ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ST FRANCIS ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST OPEN LANDS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA ↗
- Who funds The Wilder World Trust NFP ↗
- Who funds GICHIGAMIIN INDIGENOUS NATIONS MUSEUM 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: The Morton Arboretum · Metropolitan Mayors Caucus · Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · Forefront · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Walder Foundation · Field Foundation of Illinois · Oberweiler Foundation · Harold M & Adeline S Morrison Family Foundation · Advocate Health and Hospitals Corp · The Chicago Community Trust
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 Openlands 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.