· Private foundation
Shade Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k18 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $49k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $54k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNION LEAGUE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS | $54,290 |
| MIAMI UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,000 |
| SERVICE LEAGUE OF CRYSTAL LAKE | $11,835 |
| IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH | $7,500 |
| FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| EVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| CLEARBROOK | $2,500 |
| FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH | $2,500 |
| KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT | $2,500 |
| ARMED FORCES COUNCIL OF CHICAGO | $1,907 |
| MATTHIAS ACADEMY CORPORATION | $1,500 |
| LUMINARTS CULTURAL FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| OCCUPAWS GUIDE DOG ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| OCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION | $500 |
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 (FY19–24, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
27 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- ULUNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS6× · 2019–2024 · $254k · revenue +61%
- SLSERVICE LEAGUE OF CRYSTAL LAKE INC6× · 2019–2024 · $50k · revenue +126%
- OROCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION INC6× · 2019–2024 · $29k · revenue ×19
Funded once
- JHJOHNSBURG HIGH SCHOOL4× · 2021–2024 · $6k
- NMNORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $5k
- JDJOHNSBURG DISTRICT 12one grant, 2019 · $5k
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.
Operation of a nautical history museum.
The chicago club is and shall continue to be the premier club in the city of chicago, serving the business, civic, educational, and philanthropic leaders, and their families, by providing a private club with outstanding dining, service,…
The chicago bar foundation brings the legal community together through advocacy, funding, and innovation to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair, equitable, and effective.
See schedule o.the union league club of chicago (the "club") provides a unique opportunity for its members to participate as a leader in promoting civic, philanthropic and cultural matters of common interest. our offerings focus on…
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…
To promote foster and support both sweep rowing and sculling to youth and adults in the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area and to educate coach and train the general public in skills relating to rowing and in-water safety.
Labor council
Organization provides low-cost, flexible financing to non-profit and for-profit community development organizations for the revitalization of low and moderate income neighborhoods throughout metropolitan chicago.
Support state and federally chartered credit unions in illinois by providing education, advocacy and compliance services allowing them to prosper in the financial marketplace.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
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 100 club of illinois provides resources, several forms of financial support, access to training, and moral support to the families of first responders who have lost their lives in the line of duty and active duty first responders. all…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Union League Boys and Girls Clubs and the most unlike its peers is Armed Forces Council of Chicago. 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 64 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 41 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 UNION LEAGUE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS ↗
- Who funds SERVICE LEAGUE OF CRYSTAL LAKE INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Armed Forces Council of Chicago ↗
- Who funds LUMINARTS CULTURAL FOUNDATION THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS RAILWAY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds OCCUPAWS GUIDE DOG ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MATTHIAS ACADEMY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEARBROOK ↗
- Who funds PHI KAPPA TAU FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE LAND CONSERVANCY OF MCHENRY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ALPHA XI DELTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHEDD AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME & AID SOCIETY OF ILL ↗
- Who funds Crystal Lake Little League Baseball Inc ↗
- Who funds CYT Chicago Inc ↗
- Who funds NSSRA FOUNDATION ↗
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: AbbVie Foundation · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Shade 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 Shade Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Shade 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.