· Private foundation
Special Kids 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 $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $190k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Helping Hand | $35,306 |
| The Chicago Lighthouse | $35,000 |
| The Kids Equipment Network | $30,000 |
| Search Inc | $25,000 |
| Special Gifts Theatre | $25,000 |
| Oak Leydon Developmental Services | $23,269 |
| Parents Alliance Employment Project | $16,660 |
| Esperanza Community Services | $6,415 |
| Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago | $3,350 |
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, $267k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% 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 +31% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 1 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
THE CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED6× · 2018–2025 · $210k · revenue +46%- PAPARENTS ALLIANCE EMPLOYMENT PROJECT5× · 2017–2025 · $111k · revenue +187%
- CFCenter for Independence through Conductive Education Inc5× · 2018–2024 · $100k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- ODOAK-LEYDEN DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICESSSone grant, 2020 · $31k
- ESEASTER SEALS DUPAGE AND THE FOXone grant, 2018 · $28k
- ESEASTER SEALS DUPAGE & THE FOX VALLEY REGIONone grant, 2017 · $26k · revenue +24%
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.
To provide for individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Celebrating all abilities and unlocking potential.
Giant Steps Illinois, Inc. is committed to providing individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and their families, superior educational and therapeutic services focused on improving the quality of daily life from early chilldhood through…
Assisting individuals with developmental disabilities, socialization skills, housing, living skills, and respite care.
Provide therapy and early childhood special education for developmentally delayed and/or disabled children
Living Well Disability Services transforms the lives of people impacted by disabilities through the delivery of exceptional services.
The organization empowers familities and improves children's lives through comprehensive early intervention services, education, and therapeutic services. the organization primarily offers services to children from birth to three years…
The Child Development Center is a developmental day center designed to build the independence of exceptional children through high-quality early education and therapeutic services. It serves special needs children ages 2 to 5 from New…
Provide high quality educational, vocational, recreational and residential services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
To provide cost-effective residential, social, intellectual, physical and vocational services to individuals with autism in group homes and in home support.
To provide child and adult day services, vocational, therapy and support services for individuals with acquired or developmental disabilities or other special needs, and their families.
The center's mission is to help children and adults with differing abilities achieve their dreams by overcoming barriers to living, working, learning & enjoying recreational opportunities in the community of their choice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Kids Equipment Network Nfp. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
21 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. 21 of the 32 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 THE CHICAGO LIGHTHOUSE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED ↗
- Who funds PARENTS ALLIANCE EMPLOYMENT PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Center for Independence through Conductive Education Inc ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL GIFTS THEATRE INC CO ELISE LARSEN ↗
- Who funds OAK LEYDEN DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds La Rabida Children's Hospital ↗
- Who funds Search Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S RESEARCH TRIANGLE ↗
- Who funds THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HAVE DREAMS ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR ENRICHED LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COUNCIL FOR YOUTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS DUPAGE & THE FOX VALLEY REGION ↗
- Who funds THE KIDS EQUIPMENT NETWORK NFP ↗
- Who funds MARKLUND CHILDRENS HOME ↗
- Who funds PACTT Learning Center ↗
- Who funds OUR PLACE OF NEW TRIER TOWNSHIP ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT FUTURES ↗
- Who funds Imagination Theater Inc ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEALS METROPOLITAN CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds ESPERANZA COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
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 Coleman Foundation Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · AbbVie Foundation · The Service Club of Chicago · George M Eisenberg Foundation for Charities · Circle of Service Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Carl R Hendrickson Family Fdn · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Baxter International Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation 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 Special Kids 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 Special Kids Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Special Kids 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.