· Private foundation
Russell and Betty Shirk 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $82k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| B-N YMCA Charitable Foundation NFP | $832,460 |
| Illinois Wesleyan University | $250,000 |
| Prairie Cities Soccer League | $20,000 |
| Illinois Prairie Community Foundation | $14,281 |
| Illinois State University | $13,850 |
| The Arts Campus at Willits | $13,700 |
| Beyond the Books Educational Foundation | $10,000 |
| West Point School of Music | $10,000 |
| ISU Foundation | $8,150 |
| Healthnetwork Foundation | $5,000 |
| Chicago Fair Trade | $5,000 |
| Town of Normal Childrens Discovery Museum | $5,000 |
| Simmons University | $4,000 |
| University of Illinois | $4,000 |
| Young Life | $3,000 |
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, $32k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 16% 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.
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.
32 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 8 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, 26% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $879k 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
- IWILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $2.7M · revenue +14%
- TATHE ARTS CAMPUS AT WILLITS9× · 2017–2025 · $109k · revenue +411%
- BABOOKS AND BREAKFAST4× · 2020–2024 · $48k · revenue +247%
Funded once
- CCCommunity Cancer Center Foundationone grant, 2019 · $72k · revenue -12%
- ITISU Thomas Metcalf Schoolone grant, 2018 · $14k
- OSOPEN STUDIO PROJECT INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +91%
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.
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…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
To be the trusted partner in all healthcare decisions and improve health by proviidng highly accessible, world-class care and services.
To be the trusted partner in all healthcare decisions and to improve health by providing highly accessible, world-class care and services.
Uchicago medicine network, inc. supports and encourages health and human service by providing support, directly or indirectly to ingalls memorial hospital, the university of chicago medical center, and other related tax-exempt…
The mission of mchc chicago hospital council is to foster, promote, support, develop and encourage charitable, educational, scholastic and scientific purposes; promote cooperative effort and action between hospitals and other health care…
Steadfast in jesus christ as revealed in the holy scriptures, concordia university chicago promotes academic rigor in its liberal arts and professional programs; grounds students in objective truth, integrity, and excellence; and practices…
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Our vibrant network of diverse chicago charter schools enables students to thrive every day, puts them on a path to success in college and life, and empowers entrepreneurial educators to pursue excellence through innovation.
The mission of the university of illinois alumni association is to enhance and advance the relationship between the university of illinois at urbana-champaign (the university) and all its alumni; to inspire lifelong loyalty and pride among…
We, loyola university health system and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities.lumc is a member of loyola university health system and trinity…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Illinois Prairie Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bloomington-Normal Mulberry School Corp. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 76 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 ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Carle Cancer Institute Normal LLC ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS CAMPUS AT WILLITS ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS PRAIRIE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Community Cancer Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds BEYOND THE BOOKS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOOKS AND BREAKFAST ↗
- Who funds MCLEAN COUNTY ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS ART STATION ↗
- Who funds MCLEAN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds LIFELONG ACCESS ↗
- Who funds INTONATION MUSIC WORKSHOP ↗
- Who funds DAVID DAVIS MANSION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRAIRIE CITIES SOCCER LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds SIMMONS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MCLEAN CO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds WEST POINT FELLOWSHIP INC DBA WEST POINT SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds AUGUSTANA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds OPEN STUDIO PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY AT ST JOAN OF ARC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL ↗
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: Snyder Family Foundation Nfp · Illinois Prairie Community Foundation Inc · Parker Kemp Foundation · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · The Owen Foundation · Paul a Funk Foundation · The Growmark Foundation · Stephen S and Anne E K Matter Foundation · Breitweiser Family Foundation Inc · United Way of McLean County · Carl R Hendrickson Family Fdn · The Ayco Charitable 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 Russell and Betty Shirk 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.
- Simmons University — 1% 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.