· Private foundation
Ruth Family 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 FY2024–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $13k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH | $13,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $5,500 |
| 100 CLUB OF ILLINOIS | $5,000 |
| PIONEER CENTER FOR HUMAN RESOURCES | $2,500 |
| MCHENRY COUNTY FARM BUREAU | $2,500 |
| MCHENRY COUNTY FAIR FOUNDATION | $2,250 |
| MCHENRY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $2,200 |
| NORTHWESTERN MEDICINE | $2,000 |
| ROTARY OF MARCO ISLAND | $2,000 |
| GIGI'S PLAYHOUSE | $2,000 |
| VETERAN'S PATH TO HOPE | $1,200 |
| THE NICOLAS D SERGI FOUNDATION | $1,036 |
| THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MCHENRY COUNTY | $1,000 |
| JACK BEAR FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| WOODSTOCK FOOD PANTRY | $1,000 |
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 (FY25–25, $500) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 100% of Ruth Family 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. Read by recipient address, 95% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 0% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
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.
To promote, support, assist, sustain and encourage the charitable, educational, scientific and recreational programs, projects and policies of the McHenry County Conservation District and other open space organizations. This is…
To expand equitable health care and healthy living in Cook County and champion solutions through funding, education and advocacy.
Illinois Partners for Human Service's primary activities are (1) strengthening human services in communities throughout Illinois by building a unified human services sector; (2) working with leaders, the public, and others engaged in the…
Strengthen United Way movement in Illinois
Provide fnancial aid to mental health services in McHenry County to foster mental health programs to educate the general public of mental health problems and prevention.
Advocating the voice of agriculture through education and grassroots legislation.
Research and recommendations on tax and spending issues
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The 100 Club of Illinois and the most unlike its peers is Nicholas D Sergi Foundation. 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 33 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
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 30 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 University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE 100 CLUB OF ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds MCHENRY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MCHENRY COUNTY FARM BUREAU ↗
- Who funds MCHENRY COUNTY FAIR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Transitional Living Services Inc ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF MCHENRY COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Nicholas D Sergi Foundation ↗
- Who funds McHenry County 4-H Youth Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Woodstock Food Pantry ↗
- Who funds THE JACK BEAR FOUNDATION NFP ↗
- Who funds Family Health Partnership Clinic ↗
- Who funds Turning Point Inc ↗
- Who funds ST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Huntley Youth Football Inc ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS SHERIFFS' ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Independence Health & Therapy ↗
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: The Community Foundation for McHenry County · Foglia Family Foundation · Lichtenheld Family Foundation · Full Circle Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · AbbVie Foundation · Mental Health Resource League for McHenry County Inc · The Bersted Foundation · Aptargroup Charitable Foundation · Kunes Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Ruth Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Ruth Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ruth Family 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.