· Private foundation
Out of the Box Foundation Inc
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 $10k28 grants · $96k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $26k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY | $15,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $11,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| HEIFER INTERNATIONAL | $5,000 |
| IRC INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $5,000 |
| LASALLE STREET CHURCH FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE | $5,000 |
| LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN HEALTH CENTER | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS | $5,000 |
| LINCOLN PARK COMMUNITY SERVICES | $5,000 |
| UPTOWN PEOPLES LAW CENTER | $5,000 |
| HIMALAYAN YOUTH FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| OPEN BOOKS | $5,000 |
| LASALLE STREET CHURCH FUND | $5,000 |
| LASALLE STREET CHURCH BREAKTHROUGH FUND | $5,000 |
| ACLU | $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 (FY20–25, $9k) 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.
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 +63% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 10 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY9× · 2017–2025 · $75k · revenue +140%- CGCABRINI GREEN LEGAL AID9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +32%
- LPLINCOLN PARK COMMUNITY SERVICES9× · 2017–2025 · $38k · revenue +9%
Funded once
- LSLASALLE STREET CHURCH - BONES BEAUTYone grant, 2020 · $15k
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%- LSLASALLE STREET CHURCH- REFUGEESone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
Our mission at the university of chicago medicine is to provide superior health care through rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing. in partnership with our colleagues, we pursue life-changing…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
The Chicago Refugee Coalition is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated ot the alleviation of human suffering through innovative partnerships, advocacy and community empowerment.
Enlace Chicago convenes, organizes, and builds the capacity of little village stakeholders to confront systemic inequities and barriers to economic and social access. Enlace Chicago is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives…
To strengthen communities through educational dialogue, leadership development, emotional resilience, and intercultural competence programs that help people bridge differences and build trust.
Chicago Jobs Council (CJC) pursues its mission through advocacy, applied research, public education and capacity-building initiatives focused on influencing the development or reform of public policies and programs. From 18 original…
Latino Union works to defend the rights and dignity of contingent workers, including the right to immigrate, work, live free of oppression and violence, and provide for oneself and one's family.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Moms Inc and the most unlike its peers is Midwest Immigration Bond Fund. 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 38 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
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 58 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 GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY ↗
- Who funds CABRINI GREEN LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds HIMALAYAN YOUTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LINK Unlimited Scholars ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS ↗
- Who funds LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Uptown People's Law Center ↗
- Who funds Cornerstone Academy co Richard Van der Molen ↗
- Who funds ART ON SEDGWICK ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds NEW MOMS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG LIFE ↗
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 · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Arie and Ida Crown Memorial · Circle of Service Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Out of the Box Foundation Inc 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.