Skip to content
Plinth

· Public charity

Ralph J Smith Foundation Inc

Provide Grants For Chaplaincy Services and other 501(c)(3) organizations

$77k
Granted FY2024still arriving
5
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$30k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172024.

Education$287kReligion$150kFood & Nutrition$105kPhilanthropy$90kHuman Services$65kHealth$40k
02FY2024 · 5 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k2 grants · $10k
  • $10k–50k3 grants · $67k
$12,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$251k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Keeping Families Covered$30,000
Waukegan To College$25,000
Northwestern University$12,000
Fill A Heart 4 Kids$5,000
Hope Food Distribution Services$5,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY22–24, $65k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%Keeping Families Covered: $30k → 8%Keeping Families Covered: $20k → 8%Keeping Families Covered: $10k → 8%Fill A Heart 4 Kids: $5k → 8%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
04Your field

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.

1
Lake Forest College

Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…

Education
2
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's mission is to bring the real world to business education and leadership development.

3
University Center of Lake County

The university center of lake county provides facilities and support services for its member colleges and universities in delivering higher education programs to lake county students.

Education
4
Rockford University

To educate men & women to lead responsible lives by means of a curriculum grounded in liberal arts learning and complemented and extended by professional and practical experience, through the total academic and co-curricular experience,…

Education
5
Community Foundation of Northern Il

The Community Foundation of Northern Illinois ("CFNIL") was established to serve as a catalyst for giving and a promoter of philanthropy. The Foundation attracts, preserves, and grows a charitable endowment for the present and future needs…

Philanthropy
6
Pediatric Faculty Foundation Inc

We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…

Health
7
The Northern Michigan University Foundation

The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.

Education
8
Chicago State Foundation

The mission of Chicago State Foundation is to advance the interest and welfare of CSU by building relationships, securing philanthropic support, stewarding assets and otherwise procuring private support on behalf of the University. Working…

Education
9
Feeding Illinois

Feeding illinois is a coalition of eight feeding america food banks that provide food to over 2,400 food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters that feed nearly 1.4 million residents across the entire state of illinois.

Food & Nutrition
10
The Partnership for College Completion

The Partnership for College Completion (PCC) champions policies, practices, and systems that increase college completion and eliminate degree completion disparities for low-income, first generation, and students of color in Illinois…

Education
11
Illinois College

Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…

Education
12
University of Chicago

The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Lake County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Keeping Families Covered. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

8 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 8 of the 12 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
4/8
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

College of Lake County Foundation — $250,000 · EducationCollege of Lake County FoundationWaukegan To College NFP — $25,000 · EducationWaukegan To College NFPFirst United Methodist Church — $102,283 · OtherFirst United Methodist ChurchRosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science — $40,000 · OtherRosalind Franklin University …FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH — $37,000 · OtherFIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCHTRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH — $10,800 · OtherTRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH+1 more — $5,000 · OtherNORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK — $100,000 · Food & NutritionNORTHERN ILLINO…THE LAKE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION — $90,000 · PhilanthropyTHE LAKE COUN…KEEPING FAMILIES COVERED — $60,000 · Human ServicesKEEPING F…FILL A HEART 4 KIDS — $5,000 · Human ServicesFILL A HE…Northwestern University — $12,000 · Recreation & Sports
Education$275,000Other$195,083Food & Nutrition$100,000Philanthropy$90,000Human Services$65,000Recreation & Sports$12,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetCollege of Lake County Foundation — $250,000 over 1y, 3.6% of budgetNORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK — $100,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetTHE LAKE COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION — $90,000 over 2y, 1.0% of budgetKEEPING FAMILIES COVERED — $60,000 over 3y, 2.6% of budgetRosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science — $40,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetWaukegan To College NFP — $25,000 over 1y, 1.9% of budgetNorthwestern University — $12,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetFILL A HEART 4 KIDS — $5,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budget
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.

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.

John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber PhilanthropyIL17.8× affinity6 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: John and Kathleen Schreiber Foundation D/B/A Schreiber Philanthropy · Baxter International Foundation · Hunter Family Foundation · The Lake County Community Foundation · Julian Grace Foundation · First Bank Chicago Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program

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 Ralph J Smith 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%5%10%15%20%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–20%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Ralph J Smith Foundation Inc?

    Find your warmest path to Ralph J Smith Foundation Inc 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 12 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph