· Private foundation
Tengelsen 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k9 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $110k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $200k
- $250k+1 grant · $476k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $475,875 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $200,000 |
| NAMI CHICAGO | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| PILOT LIGHT | $20,000 |
| SHIRLEY RYAN ABILITY LAB | $15,000 |
| MT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL | $14,560 |
| BIG SHOULDERS FUND | $10,000 |
| MT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL | $9,150 |
| MT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| MT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| THE COLLECTIVE | $2,000 |
| HENDERSON COUNTY HUNGER COALITION | $750 |
| ST JOHN DE LASALLE | $525 |
| ST BASIL | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% of your 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +48% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 4 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k 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
- BSBig Shoulders Fund7× · 2017–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +67%
- RIRehabilitation Institute of Chicago6× · 2019–2024 · $995k · revenue +33%
- NCNAMI Chicago8× · 2017–2024 · $187k · revenue +551%
Funded once
- KSKENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $260k · revenue +61%
- BFBLACKHAWKS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $25k
- SFSALUDE FAMILY HEALTH CENTERone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
The chicago psychoanalytic institute transforms the lives of individuals, families and communities, using psychoanalytic knowledge to help them grow and thrive.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
As the largest association of independent schools, nais co-creates the future of education by uniting and empowering our community. we do this through thought leadership, research, creation and curation of resources, and direct…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
The mission of the university of chicago has been to sustain at the highest level of excellence, the communication of knowledge, the creation of knowledge and the fostering of a dynamic community of scholars and students.
Chicago scholars is transforming the leadership landscape of our city by resolving the fundamental barriers to success for academically driven, first generation college students from under-resourced communities.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Ai4all's mission is to ensure that the next generation of ai leaders reflects humanity. ai4all is transforming the pipeline of ai practitioners who will shape ai for the benefit of humanity.
Ciis is an institution of higher education that encourages an interdisciplinary approach to learning. over 1,700 students are enrolled in masters, doctoral, bachelor of arts completion programs, and certifications. ours is a mosaic of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is After School Matters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cotopaxi Foundation. 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 26 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 64 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 Big Shoulders Fund ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago ↗
- Who funds KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NAMI Chicago ↗
- Who funds Big Green ↗
- Who funds WOLCOTT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PILOT LIGHT ↗
- Who funds DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION FOR CONSCIOUSNESS -BASED EDUCATION AND WORLD PEACE ↗
- Who funds PLAYWORKS EDUCATION ENERGIZED ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLDS ↗
- Who funds ALL STARS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HOPE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SARETT NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds BEACON ACADEMY A MONTESSORI HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CONTEXTOS NFP ↗
- Who funds THE GAPLES INSTITUTE FOR INTEGRATIVE CARDIOLOGY ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO NONPROFIT DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds GREENWOOD PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds Purple Asparagus ↗
- Who funds LINK Unlimited Scholars ↗
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 · The Lumpkin Family Foundation · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Albert Pick Jr Fund · Fifth Third Chicagoland Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · Robert R McCormick Foundation · Polk Bros Foundation Inc · AbbVie Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Tengelsen 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 Tengelsen Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Tengelsen 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.