· Private foundation
Russell and Josephine Kott Memorial Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 46% of RUSSELL AND JOSEPHINE KOTT MEMORIAL CHARITABLE TRUST’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k31 grants · $581k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $710k
- $250k+1 grant · $380k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AGEOPTIONS | $380,000 |
| CONCORDIA UNIVERISTY OPERATING | $130,000 |
| DEPAUL UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT | $100,000 |
| CENTER FOR DISABILITY AND ELDER LAW | $85,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $70,000 |
| LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR PALATINE | $65,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $60,000 |
| LUTHERAN CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES | $50,000 |
| NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER | $50,000 |
| WEST COOK YMCA | $50,000 |
| AGING CARE CONNECTIONS | $50,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF IL | $45,000 |
| CASA CENTRAL SOCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION | $35,000 |
| QUINN CENTER OF SAINT EULALIA | $30,000 |
| L'ARCHE CHICAGO | $30,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $2.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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.
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 +38% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 19 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $670k 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
- AIAGEOPTIONS INC (FKA SUBURBAN AREA AGENCY ON AGING)6× · 2018–2025 · $595k · revenue +99%
- CFCenter for Disability & Elder Law Inc7× · 2017–2025 · $488k · revenue +217%
- ACAGING CARE CONNECTIONS7× · 2017–2025 · $385k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- KGKOTT GERONTOLOFY INSTITUTEone grant, 2021 · $200k
- ELEVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICAone grant, 2017 · $150k
- DUDEPAUL UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT LOCKBOXone grant, 2024 · $80k
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.
We strive to make aging easier through the development of a network of services for older persons designed to optimize the quality of their lives.
Central illinois agency on aging believes in the independence and dignity of older persons, and that each older person should be empowered to exert control over their own life & have access to needed services. we do planning, program…
To enable older persons to live in dignity and independence.
Ailbe Senior Housing Corporation provides housing and services for the elderly, to meet their physical, social, and psycho-social needs.
Our mission is to ensure that Chicago seniors and people with disabilities benefit from nutritious meal programs that improve their quality of life and maximize independence.
Norwood crossing enhances the independence and well being of older adults; we provide older adults with a continuum of services and programs that are responsive to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the individual. we maintain…
To provide community services including adult day, child care and home care .
Operate homes for the aged and to conduct charitable and benevolent enterprises
Promote the health and independence of lake county, il, older adults
Seniors Assistance Center provides necessary services to senior citizens of unincorporated Norwood Park Township, and the villages of Norridge and Harwood Heights. These services include home delivered meals, information and assistance,…
Community care health plan's mission is to develop and demonstrate innovative, flexible, community-based approaches to care for at-risk adults, in order to optimize their quality of life and optimize the allocation of community resources.
To support and promote a means for maintaining a senior center in order to achieve specific goals, based on the needs and interests of older persons, those 50 and older except for those programs that receive state and federal funding which…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Shore Senior Center and the most unlike its peers is Deep Roots Project. 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 48 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
57 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 57 of the 90 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 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds OAK PARK-RIVER FOREST COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AGEOPTIONS INC (FKA SUBURBAN AREA AGENCY ON AGING) ↗
- Who funds Center for Disability & Elder Law Inc ↗
- Who funds AGING CARE CONNECTIONS ↗
- Who funds THE WEST COOK YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds CASA CENTRAL SOCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds L'ARCHE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER OF CONCERN ↗
- Who funds LITTLE CITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OAK LEYDEN DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Senior Home Sharing ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES AND MAINTENANCE FOR THE ELDERLY INC ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PALATINE TOWNSHIP SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Chicago Commons Association ↗
- Who funds Howard Brown Health Center ↗
- Who funds TALLER DE JOSE ↗
- Who funds MEALS AT HOME ↗
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: United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · Ageoptions Inc (Fka Suburban Area Agency on Aging) · Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Healthy Communities Foundation · Andrew and Alice Fischer Charitable Trust · Greater Chicago Food Depository · AbbVie Foundation · The Christopher Family Foundation · The Dupage Community Foundation · Westlake Health 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 Josephine Kott Memorial Charitable Trust 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.