· Private foundation
Paul a Funk 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k38 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $78k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HEARTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF ACES 65 MUNFORD HALL | $35,000 |
| YMCA | $12,500 |
| BABY FOLD | $10,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF MCLEAN COUNTY | $10,000 |
| ISU FOUNDATION RAMBO HOUSE | $10,000 |
| MCCORMICK FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| MCLEAN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $5,000 |
| ILLINOIS 4-H FOUNDATION INC 125 MUMFORD HALL | $5,000 |
| ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT OFFICE | $5,000 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA WD BOUCE COUNCIL | $5,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOME AID | $5,000 |
| CHILDRENS DISCOVERY MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| DALE TOWNSHIP FIRE DEPARTMENT | $4,000 |
| HOME SWEET HOME MISSION | $4,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $75k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% 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.
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.
45 repeat relationships — 40 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 3 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- TBTHE BABY FOLD5× · 2021–2025 · $50k · revenue +29%
- MCMCLEAN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +42%
- CHCHILDREN'S HOME & AID SOCIETY OF ILL5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- BPBLOOMINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARYone grant, 2023 · $10k
- FCFUNK CEMETERY ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2021 · $6k
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF BLOOMINGTON-NORMALone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue +12%
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.
Provide quality health care to mclean county's medically underserved residents through the operation of a free medical clinic.
Providing Social Services to Families including Child Care
An agency supportive to low and/or single income working parents. we encourage developmental growth in children aged 6 weeks to eleven years by providing them with the tools needed to further their social, emotional, physcial and…
Provides high quality, comprehensive, early childhood education and childcare in a safe and nurturing environment for Dekalb, IL area families. The experienced teachers and staff provide age-appropriate curriculum through play-based…
Provide Counselors in Child Abuse Situations
To enrich the quality of life within the diverse population of northwest rockford.
We are committed to providing quality child care to children ages two through seven. our focus is on children from low-income backgrounds. we are also committed to serving children who have been placed in foster care and those identified…
The children's center of cicero-berwyn, inc. is a community-based child care program composed of nine day care sites providing pre-school and school age day care and child development programs in the berwyn and cicero, illinois communities.
The operation of a children's museum.
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Illinois (RMHCCI) provides programs to support the well-being of children and provides a home away from home for families with children receiving medical care.
To enhance the positive development of children via innovative childcare, teaching methods and programming. while nurturing children's intellectual, psychosocial and physical development, creativity, acceptance of diversity, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Home & Aid Society of Ill and the most unlike its peers is The Tinervin Family Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 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 HEARTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SUGAR GROVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BABY FOLD ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MCLEAN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ROBERT R MCCORMICK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MCLEAN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME & AID SOCIETY OF ILL ↗
- Who funds WESTERN AVENUE COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MILESTONES EARLY LEARNING CENTER & PRESCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MUSIC CONNECTIONS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MID CENTRAL COMMUNITY ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds MINISTRY AND MORE INC ↗
- Who funds Carle Cancer Institute Normal LLC ↗
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: Illinois Prairie Community Foundation Inc · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · Snyder Family Foundation Nfp · Parker Kemp Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Russell and Betty Shirk Foundation · Tornquist Family Foundation · United Way of McLean County · The Growmark Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good
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 Paul a Funk 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.
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.