· Public charity
Social Venture Partners Chicago Inc
Social venture partners chicago accelerates the positive community change championed by innovative non-profits through engaged investing to build their capacity and impact.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $99k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRUE STAR FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE BLOC | $18,090 |
| 530 SCHOLARS | $12,170 |
| PEACE RUNNERS 773 | $12,012 |
| THE BASE CHICAGO | $11,605 |
| LADIES OF VIRTUE | $10,000 |
| IMAGINE ENGLEWOOD IF | $10,000 |
| PROJECT ONE TEN | $9,291 |
| AMPLIFIED VOICES | $8,525 |
| BURST INTO BOOKS | $5,050 |
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, $33k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +186% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 7 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, 37% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $77k 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
- TSTRUE STAR FOUNDATION INC6× · 2017–2024 · $135k · revenue +287%
- EIEMBARC INC4× · 2018–2021 · $122k · revenue +62%
- MTMETROPOLITAN TENANTS ORGANIZATION4× · 2017–2021 · $116k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- PSPROJECT SYNCEREone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +13%
- LULatino Union of Chicagoone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -48%
- AAAustin African American Business Network NFPgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +68%
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.
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Connecting and amplifying the power of individuals to build a just, equitable, and inclusive city.
Chicago Votes is a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans. We're engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government,…
To achieve parity in economic opportunity for people of color by advancing multiracial leadership in corporate governance, expanding the talent pipline for executive-level management, and growing minority businesses.
One for one chicago provides paid work-based learning, mentorship, and career readiness support for young people ages 1524 in chicago communities with high rates of unemployment and limited access to early work experience.
Blocks Together: Blocks Together (BT) is a membership-based community organizing group in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. Since 1995, BT has empowered residents to work together for systematic changes that bring…
Live Free Illinois is a statewide organization partnering with over 120 congregations and directly impacted individuals to build safer more equitable communities across Illinois. Operating at the intersection of criminal justice reform and…
Provide resources and tools to help african american youth from underserved communities aged 14-24 achieve economic sustainability through education, career, and workforce development.
To connect Black students with resources and opportunities that strengthen the necessary skills to succeed as they advance to, through, and beyond college.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Breakthrough Urban Ministries Inc and the most unlike its peers is Firehouse Community Arts Center 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.
Your grantees are a median of 13 years old; the field is 17. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 5% 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.
20 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. 20 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 TRUE STAR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds EMBARC INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN TENANTS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds PRIMO CENTER FOR WOMEN & CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH URBAN MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ONE MILLION DEGREES ↗
- Who funds LADIES OF VIRTUE ↗
- Who funds Imagine Englewood If NFP ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SYNCERE ↗
- Who funds THE BLOC ↗
- Who funds PEACE RUNNERS 773 NFP CO ↗
- Who funds THE BASEBALL INC ↗
- Who funds Latino Union of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Austin African American Business Network NFP ↗
- Who funds BLACK UNITED FUND OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds FIREHOUSE COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds Leap Learning Systems ↗
- Who funds Project OneTen ↗
- Who funds HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES AND MAINTENANCE FOR THE ELDERLY INC ↗
- Who funds BURST INTO BOOKS ↗
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 Chicago Community Trust · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · Robert R McCormick Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · The Albert Pick Jr Fund · The Joyce Foundation · A Better Chicago · Chicago Beyond Inc · The Seabury Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Vivo 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 Social Venture Partners Chicago Inc 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.
- The Baseball Inc — 2% 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.