· Private foundation
Richard and Carol Leonard Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $16k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELGIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $15,900 |
| NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK | $3,000 |
| FOOD FOR GREATER ELGIN | $3,000 |
| MISERICORDIA HOME | $2,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $1,800 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY | $1,700 |
| DENTAL LIFELINE NETWORK | $1,200 |
| NORTH CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY | $1,200 |
| WHITMAN COLLEGE SCIENCE DIVISION | $1,200 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION | $800 |
| RIDGES SANCTUARY | $600 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $500 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT | $500 |
| ANIMAL HOUSE SHELTER | $400 |
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 (FY23–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 90% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Richard and Carol Leonard Foundation’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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +4% since the first grant, against -50% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 4 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- ESELGIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION3× · 2023–2025 · $21k · revenue +30%
- FFFOOD FOR GREATER ELGIN INC6× · 2020–2025 · $12k · revenue +71%
- MHMISERICORDIA HOME3× · 2023–2025 · $5k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- SJST JUDE HOSPITALone grant, 2024 · $1k
- GBGAIL BORDEN PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRICT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $750 · revenue -50%
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.
Lincoln park zoo is dedicated to connecting people with nature by providing a free, family-oriented wildlife experience in the heart of chicago and by advancing the highest quality of animal care, horticulture, education, science and…
Wildearth guardians works to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the american west.
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
To inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature.
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
To improve and save lives through compassionate care, community engagement and advocacy for animals.
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
Connect conservationists and supporters, deploy resources to the field, provide conservationists with tools and support they need to succeed.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The sacramento zoo inspires appreciation, respect and a connection with wildlife and nature through education, recreation and conservation.
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wounded Warrior Project Inc and the most unlike its peers is Animal House Shelter Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 22 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 ELGIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR GREATER ELGIN INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds MISERICORDIA HOME ↗
- Who funds DENTAL LIFELINE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE DUNDEE TOWNSHIP ↗
- Who funds THE RIDGES SANCTUARY INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL HOUSE SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GAIL BORDEN PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Charity Navigator ↗
- Who funds TREE HOUSE HUMANE SOCIETY 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: Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Richard and Carol Leonard 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.
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How do I get to Richard and Carol Leonard Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Richard and Carol Leonard Foundation 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.